in the privacy of my bedroom, as a teenager, with funky colored pens. This involved lots of doodling as well as writing. Little hearts, daisies (shudder). I’m better at drawing the daisies now.
Later I taught myself to type on an old Smith Corona typewriter my mother or her mother purchased when Mom was in her teens or early twenties. She was born in 1923, if that gives you a clue to its age. It’s one of those typewriters that could be used to trace a murder suspect because of the way it slightly superscripts certain characters. I used it while seated on the floor of my bedroom beside my bed. Sometimes the typewriter rested on the floor, sometimes on a little castoff maple end table.
When I was about eighteen my parents bought me an electric typewriter for Christmas, and when I opened it my mother recalled hearing me pound away on the old one to finish up a term paper a few evenings earlier. She had almost given me the new typewriter then. I used this typewriter on an old sideboard from a great aunt’s house that originally had extra leaves one could add to extend it into a spare dining table. The leaves had, by the time I used it as a desk, been converted into storage shelves under my parents’ breakfast bar.
I later bought my own more modern electric, with a little daisywheel that whirred back into position at each return, instead of the whole carriage moving. I used this typewriter on an old wooden desk my husband bought at a friend’s garage sale. This desk has a center section that lowers to hold a typewriter, which I thought was pretty snazzy. It reminded my father, the first time he saw it, of a desk he used when he was in the Army during WWII. The most frightening detail of this story is, we still own that desk-though not the daisywheel typewriter. We also still own the castoff maple end table. (Oh my God, do we need new furniture.)
I’ve never dreamed of building an office over the garage as a place for me to write (as the man did in Eric Mayer’s post). I’ve been too busy writing. I write where I can, sometimes in bed like Colette, though that doesn’t seem to help me write stories like hers. But then, she never had a laptop computer she could carry anywhere she wanted.
I still do some of my best creative writing on a yellow lined pad with a pencil—and a good eraser.
I also, like Eric, prefer those chunks of uninterrupted time. Even when I think I should have time, I’m interrupted or distracted by pets, by spouse, by my own ineptitude, by the Internet, and by the dryer buzzing, or by guilt and self-loathing over house or yard work left undone. It’s always something.
The writer simply writes through it all. But sometimes it is a real pain.
1.
There was something satisfying about the typewriter’s physical manifestation of one’s effort, the stately advance of the carriage, the encouraging ringing of the bell as the next “level” was reached. You could feel the keys hitting the platen through your fingertips, or so it seemed. I only recall my old Smith Corona manual portable, and it might be that was all I used up until I got my first computer about 1990. Yeah I was late. The only trouble with typewriters, they were unforgiving of non-typists like me.
Comment by Eric Mayer — January 19, 2006 @ 8:40 pm
2.
I remember them. My Mother bought me a used typewriter. of the same vintage. She got tired of me always using her new portable Smith-Corona - the one with tape covering all the letters and numbers.
Comment by cas — January 20, 2006 @ 5:54 am
3.
This is a marvelous essay, Barbara. It spoke to me on so many levels – I’ll address one. Do not (I repeat) do not get new furniture. Well, I’ll allow you to get new furniture, but incorporate it with the old.
As I read your essay, the descriptions of furniture touched my heart most. That is probably because a lot of our furniture once belonged to someone else in our families. I’ve always been a greedy recipient. It’s made my home a living scrapbook of sorts. Just about every piece of furniture levitates a cherished memory. I suspect yours does too – otherwise you couldn’t have written so masterfully about it.
Comment by Reenie — January 20, 2006 @ 12:09 pm
4.
I remember the typewriter…in college it was my real nemesis. I had to type up all those papers and there were…let’s say…mistakes made. Caused problems. You get the picture.
Comment by violetismycolor — January 20, 2006 @ 9:26 pm
5.
Do you remember typing papers that could not have errors that had been erased or whited out and re-typed? I still have nightmares.
I think best of all is a keyboard. It’s so much faster than pen on paper, that my fingers can keep up with my thoughts (not really, but faster than handwritten). By now, it’s a straight-through process, eyes and brain and fingers.
BTW You have been tagged with the “Habitual Meme.” See my journal entry for today. It was an interesting exercise to thing over my habits and try to decide what would be unusual from someone else’s point of view, since to me they seem eminently ordinary.
Comment by Rhubarb — January 22, 2006 @ 8:43 am
6.
Rhubarb, I consider “footnote” a four-letter word, no matter how you spell it. A few years after my school paper vigils I went on to do paste-up and layout of technical manuals (before I started writing them). Then it was permissible to use tape, correction fluid, X-Acto knives, rub-ons, blue pencils, and hot wax, as long as none of my manipulations showed up on the negative. Even then, a few little dots of red fluid at the printer’s cleaned it up. I’m relieved I don’t dream about the glare shining into my eyes from a light table. Computers are a blessing. So are digital cameras—I once worked in a photo-processing lab, and I still wonder what long term effects those chemicals had on me.
Comment by Barbara W. Klaser — January 22, 2006 @ 8:10 pm
7.
Hi Barbara,
I also used to be an early crawler on paper. I especially favored crayons. Now the keyboard is my best friend and I write all day long every day.
Monika
Comment by Anonymous — January 23, 2008 @ 9:04 pm