Christmas Gifts for Writers

The holiday season is upon us; Thanksgiving has come and gone and now, with a mere three weeks until Christmas, you are no doubt feeling frantic about what to buy that special writer in your life.

Step One: See if any of these gold sticker thingies are available on Ebay.

A friend recently sent me a link to 10 More Holiday Gifts Writers Will Actually Use, and while it has a couple of good mentions on there (no, seriously, I really want someone to buy me a bookshelf portrait), a few of us agreed that it was missing some crucial items on any writer’s wish-list.  Below are six options if you’re looking for a last-minute gift that says, “Thanks, baby, for ignoring me every night while working on your ‘novel’.”  (Added bonus: Many of them complement each other, making mixing and matching easy!)

1. Grow Your Own Coffee Kit

No, really, this is the product.

Everyone knows that books are written in caffeine-fueled fits of brilliance, most likely at 3:30 am.  Who needs sleep when you have GLORY AND TRUTH to word-vomit onto a computer screen?  This is an easy way to cut out trips to the grocery store (because much like sleep, food is overrated when you’re a serious artist) to free up even MORE time for writing.  (Link here, via ThinkGeek.)

2. Moleskine notebooks

Stupidly overpriced notebooks used by great artists and writers like van Gogh, Picasso, and Hemingway, they are perfect to take along to the coffee shop when the home-grown coffee plant inevitably shrivels and dies because your writer forgot to water it.  With many different collections, you can find the right size for your writer to fit into his back pocket/messenger bag/life/etc.  Scribbling in one of these in public ups any writer’s legitimacy factor by about 300%.  (Link here.)

3. Whisky/Whiskey

For when coffee, either at home or at the coffee shop, just isn’t cutting it.  It can be tricky, however, to figure out which brand to buy for your writer, and I’d say it depends on the writer himself.  If the writer you’re buying for is either just starting out, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and wet behind the ears, or is an established, successful writer, go with a nice bottle of Maker’s Mark.  It will make the newbies feel important and be satisfyingly sophisticated for the established writer (but not budget-crushing for you).  If your writer falls anywhere between those two extremes, a 1.75 liter plastic bottle of Canadian Mist (retails for about $15) will be your best bet, since they’re just going to drown their sorrows with it anyway.  (Available at your local ABC store.)

4. Cocktail Typewriter

Pictured above: Everything I’ve always dreamed of and more.

Combining two of writers’ favorite things, a Russian tinkerer who calls himself morskoiboy has invented a prototype of a typewriter that mixes cocktails according to which letters you push.  This isn’t available for purchase yet but this gift is so exciting that a “1 Cocktail Typewriter IOU” in your writer’s stocking should be enough to make him squeal like a schoolgirl on Christmas morning.  (You can check out more pictures and a video here.)

5. Book End Bookends

They’re soooooooo meta.  And if there’s anything a writer loves, it’s explaining what “meta” means to their unenlightened friends and family as a way to show that their lit degree wasn’t a total waste of time.  (Available here.)

6. Dolla dolla bill, y’all

The one thing that was mentioned and agreed upon as missing from The Millions article linked above was cash.  Writers are poor and, try as we might, our landlords keep refusing to accept hastily scribbled haiku as rent payment.  (Hey, we put them on sheets ripped out of our Moleskine notebooks!  Doesn’t anyone understand quality these days?)  You heard it straight from the sources, folks– money is at the top of writers’ wish-lists this holiday season.  (Available in banks, wallets, cookie jars, and the pockets of old winter coats nationwide.)