11 Muse-Worthy Valentine’s Day Gifts for Writers

Inspiration comes in many forms. When it comes to the day for lovers, these gifts are all thoughtful encouragement, worthy of conjuring a writer’s muse without being same-same old, same-old.

You can't blame gravity for falling in love.

1.     Enter blazing with a banned books coffee mug, celebrating the best kind of book – controversial, subversive, a bit scandalous. 1984, anyone? Too political?  Lady Chatterly’s Lover, then, may be a little more suited to the lover’s holiday.

2.     Celebrate the writer who writes anywhere and everywhere with a handy silicon foldable keyboard for Mac lovers or PC fans alike. They’re good for coffee shops, airports, and the couch, too.

3.     Channeling the muse is a bit like playing baseball: a player on a streak needs to honor the streak. A writer with a lucky scarf from Uncommon Goods, imprinted with their favorite story (mine’s Alice in Wonderland), is destined to hit daily word-count highs

4.     Make their name – and designation as a writer – official with a desk name plate.  

5.     Mining the depths of memory is a great way to ward off writer’s block. Rememory is a card game primed to help a writer dig deep back into time’s abyss.

6.     Turn a writer’s favorite place – or the setting of their novel-in-progress – into jewelry with this customizable coordinates bracelet made of aluminum, sterling silver or copper. A safe bet: 48.864716, 2.349014 in the springtime.

7.     Artwork is one way to turn a writer’s place into inspiration squared, says Kristen Pope in “Nine Ways to Refresh Your Writing Space for Maximum Inspiration.” A poster – like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” for example – with the entire play on a single page is a charmed gift that’ll keep the pages flowing. As Shakespeare says, “It’s not enough to speak but to speak true.”

8.     A pen that writes in chocolate? You may just get a love poem penned in your honor. Not one of those cheesy, rhyming ones, either. Okay, maybe a few slant-rhymed couplets.

9.     Keep hot sips hot and cold sips cold with a 20-ounce Yeti Rambler. This tumbler goes with me everywhere, and its handy cap has saved my laptop from plenty of water-baths in the making.

10.  For the ultimate heart-day splurge – and hours of comfy writing - give your writer a Hermann Miller Aeron Chair. In blue, of course, for possibility, for the sky and the sea, and for the perception and calm to keep wording.

11.  And for those days there’s no rescuing, how about a bottle of single malt Writers Tears Copper Pot Irish Whiskey, or Writers Tears Red Head, a triple distilled single malt that’s been matured in handpicked Spanish sherry butts, something that my brown-liquor drinking pals assure me is both fancy and impressive. (Although, if your writer is more like me and would rather down their sorrows in an extra dirty vodka martini, make sure you pick up some Mezzetta olives instead.)

Happy V-Day, readers. And remember, as Albert Einstein said, “You can't blame gravity for falling in love.”