My appreciation for typewriters began in Jr. High. The low-budget private school that I attended did not have the money to supply our typing class with typewriters, so students had to provide their own. For almost two years, four semesters of typing class, I carried my Mom’s Royal portable to school every day. The case barely fit in my locker.
Mom had strongly encouraged my selection of typing class. When faced with a limited choice of 7th grade electives, with Spanish being overcrowded and Art class full of loadies, it seemed like a positive option.
In typing class, we really learned how to type. I remember having to put small white stickers on the keys so that we couldn’t cheat and see the letters. Typing class was serious business. We were learning a valuable skill.
As I aged, now with a wife and family, and laboring within the bowels of the public school system, I found myself drawn more and more to literary pursuits. I had always been a reader, but now found myself essentially a closet writer. Preferring correspondence to all other forms of communication, I took every opportunity to put my words on paper.
Eventually, this brought me back to the typewriter.
Online I found an older gentleman in St. Louis whose business was saving and rebuilding vintage typewriters. For $250 I acquired a lovely vintage Royal Arrow portable. After researching her serial number, I learned she was a 1946 model, made just after the war. With classic lines, a black crinkle finish, and glass keys, she has character.
My little typewriter was and is in perfect working order. I am using it now to write these words (first draft of course before transferring to my computer).
The number one question I
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get from my slew foot friends is this why do you use a typewrit er? Isn’t a laptop better? Aren’t typewriters old-fashioned and obsolete? After giving some time and thought to this question, I have an answer. I use and appreciate my typewriter for the following reasons.
Using a typewriter fosters good writing. If you need to get words from your brain to paper, nothing beats a typewriter. The typewriter allows you to write, really write, distraction free. This fuels creativity. You can write without interruptions. With a typewriter there are no red or blue squiggly lines jumping off the page at you, no spell check or grammar check to disrupt your focus.
There is no temptation to look at social media or check your email or monitor the news. You simply write. For a writer, the typewriter better captures your unique voice.
Another reason typewriters foster good writing is they allow you to compose your words at just the right cadence. For my taste, computers are too fast. When sitting at my computer keyboard I tend to go too fast as words spill from my mind. I make mistakes and then go back. Internally, this makes for irritating prose. It’s like driving in stop-and-go traffic.
And with pen and paper, I can never write fast enough. With yellow pad and blue Bic pen, in an effort to keep up with my thoughts, my words become illegible and the writing process exhausting.
But when I sit down at my typewriter, thoughts seem to flow uninterrupted and I can write at just the right speed. The typewriter is the perfect conduit from your mind to the page, and when writing something almost magical takes place. It’s as if the typewriter has a soul.
I am convinced also that typing is stress reducing. Real writing is serious work and can be stress inducing. Using soulless modern products like computers can cause stress.
When using a typewriter, writing becomes a relaxing, tac- tile experience. When my fin gers caress the glass keys of my old Royal, I feel calm. The patter of metal on paper reminds me of rain on a tin roof.
The mechanical clicking of the carriage return is satisfying. At the end of each typed line I hear the pleasant ring of a tiny musical bell. Typing becomes soothing, and typewriter sounds are as calming as lapping ocean waves or crickets singing on a summer night.
A typewriter on your desk has an aesthetic appeal, giving your office or desk an old school ambience that is just cool. And real writers still use them. You may not be Hemingway or Ray Bradbury or Tom Hanks, but just owning one puts you in good company.
Typewriters are inspiring and give you a connection with writers of the past and present.
On the practical side, typewriters offer personal, private, virus-free, hack-free, secure means of communication. And typewriters add value to your words.
Personal notes and cards become heirlooms with words produced on a typewriter, as opposed to a disposable and quickly deleted email.
Using a typewriter is like driving a back country dirt road instead of taking the Interstate. It makes you slow down and consider your words.
And typewriters remind us that words matter.
© 2023 Jody Dyer
