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| Ian Fleming types James Bond |
I know I do. So much so that I own about two dozen antique typewriters. I have two Olivettis, at least four Remingtons, one of which my grandfather used for writing letters about KIA GIs under his command to grieving parents and wives during World War II. My black Remington Rand is identical to one Hemingway used in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and I keep a sixty-plus year old Royal on my desk for making notes.
I once wrote a full novel on a typewriter just to see what it would be like. That novel, Scream Catcher, had a real rhythm to it, precisely because that's what a typewriter provides. A rhythmic rat-tat-tat, like a machine gun or a snare drum. You not only invent the words, you find yourself physically living them as you create them. I'm so in love with typewriters that I use a typewriter sound program on my laptop just to mimic the experience. When I hit the Enter key, I get the sound of the carriage being shifted for a brand new sentence and/or paragraph. It's a lot of fun.
There seems to be a resurgence of typewriters these days. A kind of literary, back to the roots, forget about the digital revolution typewriter movement. You can get a brand new typewriter for yourself or your high school/college student for not a lot of money at all. When you consider the machine will last years and years, it's a solid investment. I have a brand new typewriter my ex bought me a couple years back and I use it often.
If you don't want to write a novel on it, you can write poetry, or flash fiction, or keep notes, or even write short scripts. You can always write love letters and send then the old fashioned way by snail mail to your secret lover, whoever he or she may be. What a romantic thought. But then, that's what typewriters are all about. Romance, and a trip back to the days when words were crafted one letter at a time to the rhythm of the keys.
I love this typewriter:
American Crafts Typecast Retro Typewriter by We R Memory Keepers
and this one (It's the one I use):
Royal Epoch Portable Manual Typewriter
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