There are three typewriters in my office. I have a suspicion there may be a fourth somewhere, but I don’t remember exactly where it is, or how I got it, or if I simply just want a fourth typewriter, and thus have willed it into existence. (Obviously, I do want a fourth typewriter.)
I can’t remember when I purchased my first typewriter. Perhaps it was the beautiful black Underwood my parents gave me for Christmas? Or the gray Smith-Corona I stole from my husband my husband gave me that I’m never giving back?
I do remember why I wanted a typewriter, in spite of being the proud owner of a swanky iPad + Air Keyboard combo, and dozens of serviceable journals.
Typewriters are magic. In a way a pen and a piece of paper will never be. Their sound alone is the pied piper of words. You want to write, so you start to write, and then you almost can’t stop. Typewriters are like a freight train of writing, words and thoughts building, moving steadily forward with purpose and power and rhythm, gaining momentum that keeps pushing and flowing and going. I now have a file labeled ‘typewriter thoughts’ in my drawer, because I’ve discovered the kind of thoughts born on a typewriter are special. Typewriters are magic.
To the uninitiated, I sound crazy, perhaps a little too romantic, and maybe even a tad hipster. Crazy because I believe the machines themselves create a space for a certain kind of creativity achievable no other way. Romantic because there’s just something about a typewriter that calls out to the old part of my soul that craves the slow, the beautiful, the extravagant. Hipster because—I use a typewriter. On purpose.
But to those who’ve had the delightful opportunity to use a typewriter, even if only to hunt-and-peck out ‘H-E-L-L-O’ or just your name, you know exactly what I mean. The sound, the effort of hitting the keys, the slow build of slightly grainy text on the page, the ‘ding’ and slide of the paper feed; there’s nothing like it in the entire world, and no amount of typewriter-like keyboards or typewriter-inspired PCs will ever come close.
So I have three of them. (Or four?) You know…just in case one stops working.
Rose John Sheffler 