In MY Day, We Had To . . .

I've recently become the proud owner of this early 20th century handbook:

It contains everything you needed to know about everything, from handling your finances to keeping chickens to staining your musical instruments.

No more excuses for shoddy cement. I'm looking at you, Al Capone.

Needless to say, I am now significantly more well-informed than the rest of you, and will have a much greater chance of survival during the zombie/vampire/unfinished wood apocalypse.

But I am nothing if not astonishingly magnanimous, so I thought I would share two excerpts that will be particularly useful to writers.

The first, of course, is how to make your own writing desk:

(Click to enlarge.)

Your homemade desk looks like a million bucks!
(Literally, with prices adjusted for inflation.)

And when you're done with your desk, you only need to make yourself some new ink, and you're all set to go!

Beats the heck out of tickling squids.
That's how they get it, right? Tickling?

So what are you waiting for? The Great American Novel awaits! Here, I'll get you started: Once upon a time, there were two middle-to-upper-class families. Or maybe three. And there were, like, a hundred people in each family, who I will now name one by one, even though you won't be able to keep most of them straight anyway...

Ah. Potassium bicromate, logwood extract, borax, shellac, and ammonia . . . the smell of LITERATURE!