Typewriter Talk / NaNoWriMo 2016

**Posted by RWWGreene** 28-11-2016 05:54:00

I've ended up without the time or brain space for a novel, so I've been poking along with as many short stories as I can manage. Based on my math, I'm about to around 30,000.

**Posted by Uwe** 30-11-2016 18:30:11

Today is the last day!

I'll admit that I barely made it - stumbled over the finish line actually. It had all started off really well and I was on course to finish the word count by November 13, but then life took hold and one distraction lead to another; it took a real effort over the past weekend to finish it in time and now I'm relieved that it's done for one more year.

I know our team was very small this year, and it looks like some didn't get out of the starting blocks, so I'm curious about how everyone else managed.

**Posted by Repartee** 30-11-2016 19:39:45

"I finished" he said with pardonable false modesty which was invisible anyway on the Internet... OK, snap out of it!

The handle is edgregious and it's surely not a novel but a few dismal short stories crept in by chance. Managed 40k words or so on the Remington AntiWriter but moved to an SG-1 for the final stretch as it was just easier going, Sort of a Navy Seal conditioning hike in 16 days of typing but I made it, and feel an unreasonable sense of accomplishment. I'm hooked.

**Posted by colrehogan** 01-12-2016 01:09:25

Well, I got 28,389 words in this year. I worked on several different typewriters. Finally got my platens back from JJ Short about halfway through and was able to do a lot of work on one of my L.C. Smith's. Not finished, but a hell of a lot further than I got last year.

**Posted by KatLondon** 01-12-2016 09:16:11

Well done everyone! I failed miserably, but tbh I succeeded in GETTING through the month, and had had some other successes during this time so all is not lost. I need to do more research for my story and this has not been the time for that. It's just stupid though, because I've had this one ides for something like five years and I've written tons of other stuff in that time. Very glad the rest of you did better - and v impressed, Uwe!

**Posted by Uwe** 01-12-2016 11:01:26

Congratulations to everyone who participated! The word count is arbitrary and doesn't really matter; what is of importance is that you spent time writing - and putting your typewriter(s) to practical use, of course!

Glad that you had a bit of a bounce back month, Kat. Avoiding the always-in-the-background story and writing volumes that have sprung from impromptu sessions is something I'm all too familiar with. Sometimes the scope of a more developed idea can feel daunting and we put off the task by diving into unknown waters.

**Posted by treefaller** 02-12-2016 15:58:06

Congratulations to everyone who participated this year. I decided not to, this year, after my dismal 5k and 8k attempts in the previous years. But I did type in my three-ring binder journal and, having counted the pages just now, I find that I typed 33,600 words during the month of November! So it's not a novel. But I guess I can say that it's "the story of my life" (tm). I'm glad everyone is pounding the keys.

**Posted by Repartee** 02-12-2016 21:02:55

treefaller wrote:
Congratulations to everyone who participated this year. I decided not to, this year, after my dismal 5k and 8k attempts in the previous years. But I did type in my three-ring binder journal and, having counted the pages just now, I find that I typed 33,600 words during the month of November!....

Shh... that's exactly what I did! Somewhere on the National Novel Writing Month site it says that I'm OK, you're OK, and that's OK. It's not cheating, they said. The last few days I got a reminder of what it may have been like to have to type for a living, even when it wasn't fun anymore. Was this like setting playing 50,000 sixteenth notes by count when you don't have a piece of music in your head? If only my inferior brain could have produced a connected narrative...

But I will save my embedded story about the delusional suicidal sailor buried at sea from a torpedo tube to join his lost love in the depths. I am a cheerful fellow.

**Posted by treefaller** 03-12-2016 14:24:36

Yep, I'm beginning to develop a real envy of the story-tellers since I started using typewriters and wanted something to write. Still, I love the physical pounding of the keys. And I'm absolutely sure this daily exercise with my mind--keeping the spelling and grammar correct--is bound to be good for my mental faculties as I get older. Some old people take up knitting. Some take up whittling wood. So I like pounding the keys for my recreation. That's about the gist of it.

**Posted by Uwe** 03-12-2016 14:45:28

treefaller wrote:
...I'm absolutely sure this daily exercise with my mind--keeping the spelling and grammar correct--is bound to be good for my mental faculties as I get older.

Years ago I bought around ten typewriters from an elderly Chinese man who was also a collector. Unfortunately he was being forced to pare down his sizable collection to a handful of machines because he was moving from a house to a condo. He was unquestionably melancholic about having to say good bye to so many portables, but his wife positively beamed at the sight of so many machines being loaded into my car. However, I'm veering off-topic. The point was that I had an interesting conversation with the man who explained that he used to have really bad arthritis in his hands, but when he became interested in typewriters and began to use them on a daily basis his fingers became far more limber and the discomfort went away. He considered the typewriter to be a therapeutic instrument, but stopped short of claiming that it was an ancient Chinese secret.