I
learned to type in high school. The class was equipped with
State-of-the-art, office model, Royal typewriters. The Royal could
type wonderfully well. It was not electric.
I've
heard that some writers, journalists in particular, swear by their
ancient mechanical typewriters. When I started writing for a living I
was hungry for an electric. My first electric typewriter was an IBM accounting model with a wide carriage that was twice the width of the
body of the machine. Later, when I had saved up some money, I
acquired an IBM correcting Selectric. It was second hand. At the
time, in the Flatiron Building where I had my office, new Selectrics
were being stolen out of offices the first night after they were
unpacked.
At
the time, making copies involved carbon paper. There was a carbon
paper that I used that was single use, with paper attached. As I
recall, the paper was pretty thin and, of course, the image on it was
in the carbon paper's ink. It didn't allow for corrections, even when
I could make corrections on the original using the correcting
Selectric's white correction tape.
I
learned to type fast and accurately. I was being paid for production.
Everything was a "first-draft special."
When
I started writing advertising I switched to a ball point pen -- the
Paper Mate Malibu. They cost about three dollars and refills were
widely available. At some point Paper Mate discontinued the Malibu --
and the refills. A few years ago I found a source of new refills for
the Malibu but they weren't from Paper Mate. Meanwhile I had switched
to the Bic stick Cristal. It's even lighter than the Malibu.
Writing
longhand for advertising worked fine. The ads were never that long. I
could edit an make revisions quickly and when editing was done I
could type up the text on, at first, my IBM correcting Selectric.
I
was introduced to word processing in a backward way. The PC and the
Macintosh were both on the market but I couldn't picture wring on a
squinty ten inch (was it?) screen. I had seen word processors that
had a full page screen. Lawyers were using them.
I
acquired a Xerox word processor with it's accompanying Diablo printer. They were both close to obsolete at the time I acquired them
but the Xerox did have a full page (letter format) screen. For memory
storage it used 8" floppy disks. Even then that was a rare item.
Now they've vanished into history.
As
for the Diablo, it was a daisy wheel, strike-on printer, somewhat
similar to the IBM Selectric but louder, much louder. And, when
printing, it vibrated like crazy. I used it for a while. It followed
me up to the country but when I called Xerox for service they quoted
me something crazy because their technician would have to drive up to
the middle of nowhere. They really didn't want to service it and I
really didn't want to pay the price. The Xerox went into the local
landfill and I went back to the IBM Selectric.
But
that's all history. These days I have an ordinary desktop computer
with a Brother monochrome and a Canon ink jet attached. The Brother
prints out the stories and the Canon prints out photographs. All very
up-to-date. Yet I continue to write longhand with the Bic stick. That
may be a problem.
Writing
ads by hand came naturally. Then typing them up for the art director
was simple. But writing stories, especially novels, involves a lot of
pages, hundreds of pages. And, ultimately, they have to be typed.
And,
once again, like my early days, speed enters into it. I want the
pages to keep up with my flow of thought. So I've tried using the
computer to write. Damn! My fingers aren't responding as they once
did.
Now
I'm faced with a dilemma: if I continue to write longhand I may not
be writing fast enough. Worse still, after writing out my stories
longhand, I still have to type them up. So it becomes a double
effort. But if I work directly on the computer I'll have to retrain
my fingers and my brain to type fast and accurately.
Maybe I'll just try to ease into it gently.
