John’s love for pencils is well documented. The other half of his writing formula, however, has received considerably less attention. In addition to 24 freshly sharpened pencils, John would start each day with a stack of yellow legal pads, which he would rapidly fill with his signature diction. Once a pad was saturated with script, he would file it away, and immediately move on to the next glue-bound bundle of pages.

As I left Thom’s Santa Barbara home that day, the story of his father’s infatuation with legal pads left an impression on me. We launched the Blackwing 24 later that month, the Volumes program took off, and I found myself spending most of my time designing new pencils and telling new stories. But this story always stuck with me, and I knew that we had a new chapter to contribute to it.

Three years later, I’m stoked to finally introduce our interpretation of Steinbeck’s favorite writing vessel: the (Il)Legal Pad.

Each (Il)Legal Pad is made with high-quality 80 GSM, ivory paper. If you like the paper we use in our other notebooks, you’ll love this. It comes in a set of 2 and has three paper type options: dot-grid, ruled, and plain. The pages of each Pad are also sewn-bound and perforated, so they only tear away when you need to use them.

Get one here, and write your new chapter.

The post John, Thom, and The (Il)legal Pad appeared first on Blackwing.

Thom shared the details of “the Steinbeck length,” and how he used his father’s pencils once they had been passed on to him.

Full transcript of the conversation included below.

When the pencils were down about halfway, or when the pencil could no longer be supported by this part of the hand… So they were about this long.

If they got any shorter, he would discard them. And I was a kid, my hands were smaller, and I got them. So I had pencils all my life.

Drove him crazy because I drew in the blank pages of his books in the library. Because I wanted paper.

So I’d open something really valuable and, “oh,” there’s that blank page between. And I’d draw in there.

About this long with a point, that was it.

The post The Steinbeck Pencil Length appeared first on Blackwing.

Full transcript of the conversation included below.

The saddest thing was… to my father, as a writer… is the woman who had been doing his line editing, the woman who could actually read his handwriting, finally died.

At Viking, she was at Viking Press. And nobody else could read his handwriting.

And they sent him a letter saying, “John, we’re so sorry. We know you like to write by hand, but we can’t publish your handwriting. We can’t read it. You either have to find somebody who can type it up for you, or you’re going to have to get a typewriter.”

Well, this was a big drama in our house. Big drama. And he went out and he bought himself one of those gigantic IBMs. You know the kind that when you typed on it, all the paintings in the room moved.

Tunk, tunk, tunk, tunk, tunk. It was an unbelievable sound. 

He was a six finger typist. Tick, tick. Tick, tick, tick. And it was too slow, it would drive him crazy.

What he would do is… write by hand… finish his writing for the day and then he would have to spend the afternoon typing up what he’d hand-written. Because he knew what it said. 

So he went out and bought balls in every language. Remember they had the ball? And he got balls in Finnish, and balls in Russian. Just to see what they looked like, you know?

And just to get it back on his publishers, he one day wrote… sent them… three pages in Russian. Now he couldn’t speak or read Russian, he just used the Russian ball and made all these letters in Russian.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

And shipped it off and said “How’s this?”

And they said, “You’re kidding.”

The post John Steinbeck’s Typewriter appeared first on Blackwing.

When we met with the Steinbecks at the outset of this project, we brainstormed what we could include as an exclusive gift for our subscribers. We asked Thom if his father had any letters or notes that had never been published, something the public had never seen before. What he had turned out to be even better.

He took us into his dining room, where there hung a painting. It measured roughly 18 x 24 inches and featured the elder Steinbeck in profile, realized in vibrant acrylic. “This is the greatest likeness of my father I’ve ever seen,” said Thom, “and it has never been seen outside of this room.”

The painting is by Kenny McKendry, an artist Thom and Gail met during their travels in Europe. Mr. McKendry, who calls County Antrim in Northern Ireland home, describes himself as a “contemporary traditionalist.” He is recognized around the world for his outstanding portraiture, and his portrait of John was a gift to Thom and Gail.

Thom, Gail and Mr. McKendry agreed to let us share the painting with the outside world for the first time. Every subscription contains a postcard-sized print of the portrait with a message from Thom on the back. 

In addition to the postcard, subscribers will also find a Blackwing pin, so you can show off your Blackwing flair wherever you go.

Blackwing Volumes subscriptions containing the Blackwing 24 are still available. Click the button below to subscribe. 

The post Inside the Blackwing 24 Subscription – An Unreleased Portrait of John Steinbeck appeared first on Blackwing.