The Essentials Series: Introduction and Table of Contents

If there's one thing that rivals writers' love for reading about writing, it's our obsession with the tools of our trade.

"What tools?" the outsider will ask. "Don't you just need a pencil?"

Good one.

We are artists, we are craftspeople, we are picky. Being a writer involves having an opinion about everything in life and that includes the very tools we use to write.

You ever heard of a professional photographer who just goes to the store and buys the lens with the nicest box? No! They research obsessively, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on lenses and waiting breathlessly for the latest releases to tweak their setups just once more, to inch just a little closer to the shot they're chasing like a white whale.

The photographer's lens has a real, physical effect on her final shot. The painter's brush has a real, physical effect on each stroke of his masterpiece. Meanwhile, a writer's choice of keyboard does not degrade the sharpness of the letters. Her choice of software does not alter the quality of the printed page.

Make no mistake, though, the writer obsesses over the details of her setup just as much as the photographer or the painter. It's a side effect of the endless dissatisfaction that is the torment of every artist. It's about comfort and productivity and trying anything and everything to grease the gears and make the process of writing just that much easier.

Of course, this constant tinkering with equipment and workflows is equally about spoiling ourselves, a self-inflicted form of distraction, a futile attempt to increase writing productivity by focusing on yet another activity that's not writing.

Ultimately, it's just so damn fun.

And so, in this Essentials Series, we'll be examining the basics of a writer's toolbox through a lens that's altogether too powerful and indulging in a heavily-side-tracked exploration of pickiness, gadgets, workflows and tools from the lowly pencil to the highly-specialized software that thrills us and frustrates us.

Dive right in.

1. Keyboards: Desktop, Portable, Mechanical and More