I wrote this on a typewriter. I didn’t start with a typewriter, nor did I end with a typewriter, but these words came together on a typewriter.
Typewriters are a technology whose time has passed. Their keys are heavy; any mistakes are impossible to correct; the font type and size are fixed; and anything you type is hard to share with lots of people. I could go on, the list is seemingly endless. Technological obsolescence, however, doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them.
I used to play with a typewriter when I was very young; it’s one of my earliest memories. For much of my adult life, I have wanted a typewriter and recently I was fortunate enough to be given a beautiful Underwood Portable.
Immediately, I wrote something on it. My writing was terrible. It was error strewn and it was clunky. I began writing sentences without knowing how they were going to end. I turned into rhetorical cul-de-sacs and tried to ham-fistedly write my way out of them. It was a disaster. I needed to learn how to write on a typewriter. Not type. Write.
These words began their journey as an idea in my head. They swam around in my head for close to a week. I poked and prodded the idea randomly now and then. It was rarely front and centre in my thoughts. It just sort of gestated. The words then made their way onto a sheet of A3 paper in the form of scribbled lines, odd words and a few structural notes. After an iteration or two, the notes formalised.
Then the Underwood stepped forward. It demanded complete concentration. A mis-typed letter would mean starting again. And start again I did, a fair few times. I knew how every sentence was going to finish before I started typing it. I knew the structure of the whole piece before I struck a single key.
It was a liberating experience and I think it’s fair to stay I had an epiphany. Too often we write in a rush. We write to short deadlines. We no longer plan and think through what we’re writing.
The explosion of, and demand for, content coupled with the ease with which we can write and publish have enabled more ideas to be shared and more voices to be heard. Regardless of any flaws, these are good things.
If we’re honest with each other, however, I think we’d all admit to being guilty of publishing things that we shouldn’t have published.
We put out unordered, random lists to generate hits. Lists can be so powerful but they need structure and rhythm. They should lead the reader through highs and lows. They should do this at the whim of the writer.
We publish articles in response to the issues of the day. Yet in our haste to keep up with the media cycle, we create straw men to knock down and false dichotomies to strengthen points that we haven’t researched thoroughly. We seek to be polemicists but give ourselves time only to rant. And we rant poorly. We rant without thought for cadence and narrative.
We need to be more disciplined about how we use the wonderful technology that has democratised publishing. Technology cannot do that for us. In their heyday, typewriters didn’t make us better writers; they just made us less productive. Today, however, typewriters make us better writers because typing on one is unusual, it is special. And when you opt to write an article on a typewriter, you’re making an extra effort so you want it to be perfect.
I wrote this article on a typewriter and, in doing so, I rediscovered the joy of good writing over fast writing. I then copied it out word for word on my laptop and published it online so I could share it with you.