As with most famous last words, starting this task thinking to myself, “how hard can this be?!” should have been my hint I was drastically overestimating my potato carving abilities. Taking inspiration from the late Bob Ross, “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” I found myself with many accidents—each of which could have been easily avoided if I was in the mindset of a printing press craftsman.

After beginning the task of cutting out the potato stamps, I stumbled across my first problem. I need to make dinner. Very carefully, I quartered a single small potato to create my stamps. With only four pieces, I carved out my “r” and “h” stamps on a single potato chunk. Feeling confident and resourceful, I marched outside and began stamping. Stamping the potatoes with a steady hand went well. Although, to my utter disappointment, I realized I should have mirrored the letters for my potato stamps. Each letter other than “c” and “i” needed to be flipped in order for them to be read in the correct direction. As Leigh writes, “When our writerly spirit is crushed, we develop what I call writer woundedness, a state of being that prevents us from trusting ourselves as capable of writing something we can feel good about.” (p. xi). On top of a spelling error on my second go-around, it occurred to me I should be writing the whole word backwards and flip the photo on my phone. Taking my errors in stride and realizing how much we take for granted the luxuries or mass production distribution of written work.

The process of mechanizing my writing took less than an hour. It was incredibly hilarious as I discovered what must have been novice problems only an apprentice printing press artisan would have made. Considering I had pristine paper, paints of any kind within a 15-minute drive, and the finest of potatoes, the speed at which I could experiment with the mechanize my writing seemed artificially enhanced and too easy.

References

S Rebecca Leigh. (2014). Wounded Writers Ask Am I Doing it Write? Rotterdam Sensepublishers.