Ever miss the days of the typewriter? Every so often I do.
Yes, the benefits from writing with word processing software on a computer are enormous, but typewriters had a few benefits. For one, once you had typed out the work, it was already there for you; no sitting around for hours while waiting for a proof of your 300+ page novel to print out for editing or mailing (which is what I'm doing while writing this).
But more than that, I kind of miss the mechanics of writing with a typewriter. My first typewriter was some foreign brand, a portable manual that was quite dodgy mechanically, but I loved it. My mom got my second typewriter for me in high school; it was a fancy electric Smith Corona that even had an erase key on it that would allow me to go back and automatically white-out a bad keystroke. Boy, I thought that was big time!
Then, at the age of 18 I entered college, and that's when I discovered Macintoshes. These newfangled computers were far and away better than the Vic 20 and Commodore 64 computers I was familiar with from high school. Since then, I've never looked back and I've never owned another typewriter. My (now old) Smith Corona sits unused in my mom's house five hundred miles a day.
Ah, nostaliga.
I never did and could never do the typewriter thing. Ugh!
ReplyDeleteI'm the old fogey who still writes by hand. 95% of what I've written/write has been handwriten, then typed into the computer. I flow much faster by hand, it just seems so different trying to work at the computer. And I edit way too much unless I consciously fight the urge not to look back when I'm staring at the screen.
Besides, I consider my type-in to be my first edit then, as I make adjustments and corrections during this time. This makes word processing invaluable.
I think a typewriter would have driven me insane. ;)