What are the writing tools you can't get by without?

Bill Lascher This is a wonderful question, but a difficult one to answer. I suppose the obvious answer -- in terms of Eve of a Hundred Midnights, at least -- is Melville Jacoby's Corona 4 typewriter. To be sure, that machine and another I own, a Royal Arrow, are great vehicles for getting thoughts on paper. They were particularly useful in my last two apartments, where I had nice porches that were well-suited for sitting outside on nice days to type without worrying about battery life or glare or other computer-related concerns.

However, my favorite writing resource is the Oxford American Writer's Thesauraus, 2nd Edition. I first learned of this from a guest speaker who visited my graduate journalism program. It seems like such a pedestrian tool, and one might think any thesaurus might help. What I value in this volume, though, is the hunt for precisely the right word that it consistently inspires. There are a great deal of word histories and explainers of where to choose the proper term. Often, these suggestions are provided by noted writers themselves. I've been known at times to just get lost in wandering through this thesaurus, and often it's in that getting lost that I find ways to refresh my writing.

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