A writer’s holiday wishlist for 2017

Remember when you used to write up your wishlist for Santa as a kid? I used to go through the Sears Wish Book (which they’ve brought back online for 2017), highlighting the stuff I most wanted and then distilling it into a list that fit onto one piece of paper (recycled from my dad’s office). Usually it’d be a list of toys and clothes, but sometimes there were some oddball requests. Like the rock tumbler I asked for year after year, until I finally got one… and the damn thing just ground all my rocks into dust, instead of polishing them into beautiful agates like I expected it to.

What a disappointment!

Now that I’m all grown up, I don’t typically write up a wishlist for anyone. Indeed, it’s rare that I even receive gifts these days, since most everyone I know is a starving artist. (One notable exception being the annual care package I always look forward to receiving from my aunt and uncle in Chicago, with an assortment of tasty food items from my hometown – thank you, thank you, thank you!) So, in an attempt to recapture that magical time when wishes might actually come true, I thought I’d write up a list of my Top 10 Most Wanted Writerly Items that would make my 2018 just perfect.

We can still dream, can’t we?

In no particular order, these are the items on my wishlist this year:

1. Access to Vellum Press. Vellum is a formatting software for Mac, and Vellum Press enables authors to beautifully format both ebooks and print books. It’s $249.99, which is why it’s at the top of my list as one of the most expensive, but also most useful, items I’d love to have.

2. A book-shaped jewelry box for all my costume jewelry.

3. A copy of Artists and Their Pets.

4. A real, working card catalogue. Because… why not? The bigger, the better!

5. A “When in doubt, go to the library” t-shirt AND a closet full of yoga pants. (It’s the unofficial uniform of writers and other work-from-home folks.)

6. The Folio edition of The Little Prince. So pretty!

7. A Wonderwash machine, so I never have to use the dirty dog-hair encrusted washers in our apartment complex again.

8. A “Create Something New” pin, for inspiration.

9. Candles that smell like the library (or a bookstore, or Sherlock’s Study, or books).

10. An Olivetti Valentine typewriter. This is basically my grown-up version of asking for that rock tumbler every year. Hopefully it will not be a disappointment when I finally acquire one…