I typed my Ph.D. dissertation (mathematics) on a small Olivetti Lettera 22 during '67-'68 with much of the typing being done in bed. I also loved using and collecting fountain pens. When lightweight laptops arrived, I switched and have been much happier ever since.

Okay, I keep waiting for someone to chime in by saying they prefer a goose quill and parchment; or, better yet, stone tablets and chisels!

Give me a laptop computer with a nice keyboard any day! I've always wondered how much more I would have enjoyed college if I'd had a computer instead of an old manual typewriter.

Nevertheless, I do agree that the search for the perfect writing environment can be a major hinderance to actually writing.

Steve Z.

"...I keep waiting for someone to chime in by saying they prefer a goose quill and parchment; or, better yet, stone tablets and chisels."

Don't laugh. People still write with goose quills and they're still being sold. For example: http://www.libertybellshop.com/goose-feather-quill-pen.html

You can also write with a wax tablet and stylus like the Romans did. http://www.iloveswords.com/ROMAN_Accesories_204.html

I've even searched around to see if you can still get papyrus scrolls, but so far I haven't been able to find any. A lot of ancient writers produced massive works using these primitive instruments, so it's pretty clear that productivity doesn't really have anything to do with the specific kinds of tools you use.

As for stone tablets and chisels, they're mostly for leaving memorials that will last a few thousand years.

Speaking of scrolls, scribes that hand-copy the Torah write it in sections that are later sewn together. If a scribe makes even one error in a section, he must discard it and start again.

I would think that writing with a quill was probably slower than with a typewriter or computer.

Today it's hard to believe that I and most of my classmates used typewriters during the first of my college years -- the alternative was going to a computer lab on campus, since few students had their own personal computer yet. In my second or third year, my parents gave me a Xerox 820 with WordStar. It was a dream compared to using a typewriter.

For me, there is no question that using a word processor is far more productive than using a typewriter. Word processors allow you to change your mind as you work - moving and rewriting sections and sentences without having to retype the entire rest off the document. In contrast, when we worked with typewriters I think we usually did this early drafting in pencil --which is very slow compared to typing -- before moving to the typewriter to complete the final draft.

Does anyone remember "cut and paste"?

Ha! I was trained as a graphic designer and illustrator between 1975-79, and the college was very proud of the photo-typesetting equipment it had. We had filing cabinets full of files of fonts that we had to rifle through to choose from, then photograph the letters, and cut and pate then in lines to form the artwork - to be photographed again and transferred to a lithographic press.
What a palaver... now it is just a couple of clicks of a mouse in Quark Express and its all done. I did a bit of sign-writing when i got out of college then a couple of years later Murdock destroyed the British print Unions and everything was computerised.
I had never even seen a computer, let alone worked one - so I was as redundant as a skilled craftsman could be!
Cut and paste, fiddly scalpels and the smell of cow gum - ah, I don't miss it a bit.

In my first job in marketing, I was a copywriter for the bicycle manufacturer Cannondale. I didn't do any graphic design, but I was enlisted to be one of the small marketing department staff who learned to use the brand new Itek Quadritek phototypesetting machine. What a beast -- although it was far more efficient than sending the type out to be set. It really is amazing how much the personal computer (although the Itek machine was a computer) has changed the way we do things.


MenAgerie wrote:

Ha! I was trained as a graphic designer and illustrator between 1975-79, and the
college was very proud of the photo-typesetting equipment it had. We had filing
cabinets full of files of fonts that we had to rifle through to choose from, then
photograph the letters, and cut and pate then in lines to form the artwork - to be
photographed again and transferred to a lithographic press.
What a palaver... now
it is just a couple of clicks of a mouse in Quark Express and its all done. I did a bit of
sign-writing when i got out of college then a couple of years later Murdock destroyed
the British print Unions and everything was computerised.
I had never even seen a
computer, let alone worked one - so I was as redundant as a skilled craftsman could
be!
Cut and paste, fiddly scalpels and the smell of cow gum - ah, I don't miss it a bit.

It must seem rather weird that some of us old fuddy duddies prefer old-fashioned writing implements, but there's a little method in our madness.

I don't use outliners (possibly the only person on this forum who doesn't!) - I usually can't get the framework that I have in my head out without messing up the one I have in my head, and if I do manage it, I then ignore the outline and write as I would have done anyway. My writing has always evolved. At university I wrote essays first by pen and then re-wrote them on a typewriter (the only computer we had then required punch cards ...). Although the implements I use now are different, the pattern is the same. Writing and rewriting a work gives me better results than trying to plan it first.

Apart from the tactile satisfaction of using pens and typewriters, I don't like reading from a computer screen, so having a version on paper works better for me. That said, I am preparing my new book in WritingOutliner for Word. I don't have to learn any new software, I can add footnotes, endnotes and graphics as I go, and it produces an output format my publishers like. Already being known and published I'm possibly given more leeway on such matters than most :-)

Graham