- Spazmelda
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Re: What do people use their typewriters for?
I'm no writer, so I started pen-palling to use them. I have some typewriter pen pals that I met here and on the FB page, and some non-typewriter pals that I found on a website called penpalworld. And one non-typewriter pen pal that I've converted to a typewriter pen pal 
- KatLondon
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Re: What do people use their typewriters for?
... and I can't be trusted with a pen pal any more than I can be trusted with a library card! Something about finding an envelope, remembering where you put the one with the address on, going to the post office, etc... Email was, in that sense, invented for people like me.
The only other thing I don't write on a typewriter is blog posts. Despite being an actual blogger-&-typophile. I find them great thinking tools though - work-work stuff - list-making, drafting, spilling-it-all-out stuff, drafts, brain-dumps. Plus draft scenes for work in progress, character sketches, poems, daily journals, dreams, letters that never get sent, to-do lists (red caps for headings) - in short, anything you might also use a notebook for. I'm the kind of person who tends to always have a notebook AND a laptop AND at least one book in my bag, plus maybe a small tablet, and a couple more books for work... it sometimes feels like it would be a short leap to stuffing a little typewriter in there too. I'd love one of those 4Y Skyriters.
- Repartee
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- Registered: 12-10-2015
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Re: What do people use their typewriters for?
KatLondon wrote:
I find them great thinking tools though - work-work stuff - list-making, drafting, spilling-it-all-out stuff, drafts, brain-dumps. Plus draft scenes for work in progress, character sketches, poems, daily journals, dreams, letters that never get sent, to-do lists (red caps for headings) - in short, anything you might also use a notebook for.
May I ask what your organizational scheme is for the resulting raw typescript?
"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
- KatLondon
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Re: What do people use their typewriters for?
May I ask what your organizational scheme is for the resulting raw typescript?
Um... I can assure you that I am VERY organised. [ahem]
- Repartee
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Re: What do people use their typewriters for?
I can assure you that I am VERY organised. [ahem]
I am sure you are, but I was hoping for more detail.
My present scheme is "Sit down at a typewriter whenever the mood hits me and type a page or two of whatever enters my mind. Leave in random piles". I am not sure I am realizing the maximum productive potential of the tool, but I might be wrong.
"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
- KatLondon
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Re: What do people use their typewriters for?
I have folders, too. Piles and folders. Some of them are in the sideboard, some are on the table (or, right now, on the couch), some are in box files on a cupboard in the other room... It's not great. I'm supposed to be a) freelance, self-employed and organised, and b) writing a book. But of course most of everyone's professional life is ultimately online these days, even more so if you work over the internet or do social media marketing, etc. Right now I'm on deadline on a poetry commission for Shakespeare's birthday, and have a laptop, notebook and Olympia SF set up on the kitchen table - but that turns out to be kind of close to the food... and in the spare room, which really needs to be rented out asap, I have a Hermes 3000 with two pages of a possible scene for the aforementioned book, still in the machine. Need to take that out and file it somewhere. And I cheated and used the novel notebook to draft the poem, just because it's a nicer notebook. I don't know. I might have to rip the page out now.
- Nicole
- Novice Typer
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Re: What do people use their typewriters for?
All the letters start out with a description of whichever machine I'm typing on. My poor friends.
This made me laugh aloud, JanetLand. I love that you do that!
My typewriter has been producing address labels for my book parcels for years. So much clearer than handwritten, and I think more personal than a computer generated and printed label !
What a great idea! You have inspired me to do this too.
I agree with you KatLondon that they are great for brain-dumps and things that you would usually use a notebook for.
So far I've been using mine to type out book notes and reviews which I used to do on the computer and post online, but I now prefer the offline process. (Plus, putting book reviews online kinda feels like shouting into the void these days.) I also plan to type out essays on topics that interest me as well, just to consolidate my thoughts on things.
- JoeV
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Re: What do people use their typewriters for?
I'm convinced that piles and piles of papers represent "proto-files," since if you flip the piles from being stacked vertically to being stacked horizontally, you have a file folder! At least, that's my excuse.
Seriously, I tend to organize my typings into 3-ring binders, using a hole puncher. And I have various binders for specific purposes. But I also keep a paper portfolio binder labeled "To Be Filed" as a temporary catch-all folder, that I will periodically attack and sort the contents into their respective permanent binders.
I used to do lots of handwritten journalling, but would never stick with one bound journal book long enough to fill it up, hence my writings were distributed haphazard amongst various partially used journals. This when I finally migrated to journalling on loose leaf paper, that could then be bound into binders by date, subject or whatever method is appropriate; random-access journalling, rather than serial-access, as is the case with bound journal books.
~Joe
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Re: What do people use their typewriters for?
I'm convinced that piles and piles of papers represent "proto-files," since if you flip the piles from being stacked vertically to being stacked horizontally, you have a file folder! At least, that's my excuse.
Seriously, I tend to organize my typings into 3-ring binders, using a hole puncher. And I have various binders for specific purposes. But I also keep a paper portfolio binder labeled "To Be Filed" as a temporary catch-all folder, that I will periodically attack and sort the contents into their respective permanent binders.
<...>
~Joe
I have always found your postings targeted, insightful and all that good jazz. Why, you make me reexamine the very idea of "filing", which I had thought was on a level so basic to avoid all reexamination in this life! I'll flip your proto-file idea on its head, though: hanging vertical files are nothing but horizontal piles of paper stood on their edge! I knew there was something I did not really like about them. They are a sham. They consume effort and create a temporary feeling of organization but are simply a space saving method of sticking piles of paper away in drawers.
The loose leaf idea is brilliant - it not only brings the papers together, it orders them and allows reordering - without electricity or cooling fans in the manual typewriter spirit. I have never been able to make the "to be filed" idea work though. It's like the dreaded "miscellaneous" label - a way station to oblivion on the entropy express. But then I've missed the self-organizing station already, when I discovered a number of very good manual typewriters but never stopped to shift to the user mode - instead collecting and collecting and collecting...
I would feel more sanguine about the three ring binder idea if I had not just been very proud of myself to toss about a dozen oddball binders I had bought CHEAP many years ago, but never collected any sheets except dust sheets. But, the illusion ever green is on me - if I just went back to the store and bought some NEW binders it would all work out this time! Straight is the gate.
"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
- Spazmelda
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Re: What do people use their typewriters for?
There are quite a few different methods for 'binding' loose pages. This would be if you have something you want to be a little fancier than 3 hole punch or something like that. Maybe for a typed journal or one off book of poetry, something like that. Most of them involve sewing with waxed thread or gluing. If you google 'binding loose pages' you will find many tutorials.
