For years, I have wanted to try my hand at writing the “Great American Novel”. I’ve gotten several stories started but have a difficult time progressing. I sit and stare at the monitor until I take a break and visit sites like this one, or various other pages and before you know it, the day is gone.
A while back, after what was probably one or two glasses of wine too many I ordered a manual typewriter, a Royal Futura 800 from the early 60s. I’ve set up a separate space away from the computer area and where I leave my phone and iPad. I’m still getting used to it but am finding focus to be much better. I’m starting to think this may be one of my best wine related purchases in quite a while.
My college roommate had dreams of being a writer. He got a manual typewriter because he felt he was more connected with the work, or something like that. For reasons I never fully understood, he decided it would be good training to type an existing novel. He chose Joyce’s Ulysses. He typed the whole damn thing on a manual typewriter. It took months. Luckily, I never walked in and found that he had been typing “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
So what are you going to do to submit a manuscript, scan the pages and convert it into a Word document?
I can see the attraction of not having the internet to attraction. But I typed a lot of MS on a manual in the 1970s and the big hassle was making corrections with white-out etc. I rented an IBM Selectronic with a correctable ribbon to type my thesis, and it was great being able to make corrections as I went along. And of course, if you want to move blocks of text around or make other revisions it’s impossible without retyping the whole thing.
Jack Kerouac had an Underwood. You need the continuous scroll of paper, too. Note, Bukowski thought using a computer was the best thing ever and that it actually made him a better writer, but he had plenty of typewriter experience under his belt. Lee Child wrote Killing Floor using a pencil, but after it was published he could afford a computer. You have to earn those conveniences.
Re. good training: obviously you had to learn how to type somehow. Certain old-school typewriters also strengthened your finger muscles.
If you make mistakes, don’t worry about them too much. You don’t want to spend a lot of time fixing typos and lose your train of thought. Make corrections in pencil so you can quickly keep going. If like yours and end up using it a lot, I would recommend getting an electric typewriter. It will be easier to type at a more natural pace on that.
Back in high school, I practice my typing on my mother’s manual - I was probably one of the last people to take an electric typewriter to college (by the time I graduated, people were using PCs and Macs to type their papers).
Manual typewriters ARE great! I have a 1953 Olympia portable that I use for thank you notes (my handwriting is terrible) and correspondence with a pal in Europe who writes back on his Olympia and for file folder labels. I typed my thesis on an electric typewriter in 1991, then paid someone to retype it on a word processor. I bought the Olympia in 1995 on a whim, and pretty much ignored it until recently. It was in perfect working condition, but I took it to a local repair guy (age 85) who cleaned and oiled it, and I have been banging away happily on it ever since. Also bought carbon paper and onion skin paper for file copies of my correspondence.
I took an electric typewriter to college a year after you. I wrote all my papers on it, too. That is, until we started dating. You taught me to use a word processor.
I helped type my PhD thesis in 1962 on a manual (my mother did most of it) and it was a horrible experience. Correction of 5 carbons was dreadful. Typing (more accurately typesetting) my work on a computer is a dream by comparison.
On the other hand, a friend typed a book on a typewriter (electric I assume) and commented to me as retyped the whole thing after all his proofing and marking revisions that retyping it, rather than modifying a computer file, allowed him to achieve a consistency of style that editing of a computer would never achieve.
I love typing first drafts on my manual typewriter. I’m a three-draft kind of person, and I think my writing benefits from having to be completely retyped from page one, because as I retype it, I will see things I should have changed when I was going over it by hand.
If I did it all on the computer, I would see things once it was in print that I should have seen when I went over it by hand, but I missed.
Now I’m a super fast typist so that helps my process.
For anything with footnotes, I wouldn’t even think about a typewriter. God what a hassle that was.
ETA: Big fan of Olivetti Lettera, my typewriter of choice since the 1970s, but I also have a Selectric if I want to really rip that first draft.
My plan is since I have to re-read it in order to edit and make changes I’ll just type it into Word. Having it in front of me and retyping will keep me focused and less likely to get distracted.
The first typewriter I remember using was my father’s back in the day. It was electric but the lettering was unusual. Not exactly cursive but not standard. I wish I could describe it better and I would give anything to have it right now. In college I got a word processor and did most of my undergrad and graduate work on it. My final few semesters I frequented the computer labs at school and did my work there.
I will say that the more I use my manual typewriter, the more I love it. There’s just something about the sound and the durability of it that I really like. In 10 years I don’t know how many computers I have had from desktops to laptops, not counting work computers. The idea that I am using something my grandparents could have used and was around before I was born yet still works perfectly just does something for me.
I will never know. I skipped keyboard class in highschool for a whole school year. My friend who started typing in her mothers office, as a toddler, used to do all my turn in work. I made an A in that class. Somehow. Never ever showed up, not even once.
My father had a nice Olivetti manual typewriter. It would probably be worth something today, but I think he gave it to one of his sisters. And then later he had an IBM Selectric, with the ball element, but without the built-in correction film of the later models. It was built like a tank and weighed as much.
Anyone remember the process for centering the title of a paper? You had to tab to the middle of the page, count the number of characters in the title (including spaces) and then backspace half that number. Really tedious.
