Beats the hell out of texting - not that I have or ever WILL do that!

Meow.

I too learned on a typewriter. Well, I never really learned and I still type slower than most people. I should really utilize all ten fingers... I never owned one myself. My mom had a really crappy one that I used for typing out poems, song lyrics, short stories and school assignments. But that was only if I had to show the work to someone else. Otherwise it was all done with pencil and paper. I liked it that way.

The first time I encountered a computer was around 1980. A neighbor kid got himself a Commodore. A Vic 20, I think it was. It wouldn't be until the mid-nineties that I got my own computer.

It is obviously so much quicker and easier to write, edit and save your work these days. But the thing about typing on paper was that it forced you to put some thought into what you wanted to write in another manner.

I was reading one of the Amateur Friday scripts over at ScriptShadow the other week and the first thought I had was that the writer should be forced to use a typewriter instead of a computer. It is way too easy to just type the first thing that comes to mind and not give it a second thought. Just because you have Final Draft doesn't make you a screenwriter. And that's what it read like – like someone who was very happy to see words on the screen appear in the correct format but with little thought about what those words actually meant and how they would sound when spoken. In other words, it was bad.

It is very similar to how music software works today. Any kid with Apple GarageBand thinks they are a musician now. Most of these kids will never learn how to play a real instrument. Why bother? There are pre-made loops you can throw in the mix instead. Learn how to play an instrument first, then get the software to realize your songs and ideas. It has to come from your mind first. I know, we said the same thing about drum machines in the eighties... they have no soul!

I guess I'm an old fart too, but I think it should be a bit tough to make your art. It makes you think harder and hopefully the end result will be better and more thought through.

Sorry for the rant. I have to go wash the ribbon ink off my hands now.

Yes, typing class. My best buddy and I took it because it was easy and all of the cute girls were in there. Who knew that later on as an advertising copywriter and then short story and screenwriter, that "Typing IA" would be so valuable?

@Teddy: I've read a lot of comments from the more 'senior' caste of screenwriters who say the same thing about computers: It's too damn easy to put something down without really thinking it out. Typing on a typewriter is a pain in the ass, but precisely because of that it forces you to choose each word carefully. Brings to mind this fairly recent post.

@jjg: Ah, yes. The cute girls. I believe I was one of three guys in a class with like 30 girls back at Moreno Valley High School when I took typing from Mr. Palomino.

To put things in perspective, my oldest son learned to type playing online video games.

Like all technologies, the typewriter has it's good points and bad points. What I miss is the retyping -- seriously! I think word processing sold itself on us never having to retype again, but you know, that act of retyping the script word by word was one of the best revising and editing exercises, something I sometimes force myself to do even now - after my first rough draft, I'll print the script, start a new file and retype everything back into the computer. Invaluable, I find, for not only for getting deep deep into the story but also for wandering around the edges and discovering something new.

I haven't had the courage to do what we used to do and retype multiple times. Not sure my hands could take it anymore.

I insisted on taking a typing class in high school, which was much more difficult that I would have imagined. Not only was typing more difficult, but I was the only boy (although there were great advantages in that for a young man who really had no idea how to talk to girls. The flip side being I some how ended up in a class with about half of the Drill Team) and finally, my counselor said it would be a waste of my time. That was in 1977!

My parents gave me an IBM electric typewriter (that I still have) for a graduation present. It went with me into the Army and then latter to college. I wrote my thesis on it, filled out applications and wrote several stories and shorts on it.

But while in the Army before college I made the leap from typewriters to computers, the very first computer I used was a networked Cray supercomputer at the National Security Agency. Of course I couldn't use it for regular word processing, but I did have some very cool functions.

After college I went back into the Army as an officer and bought a word processor (I don't even remember the brand) and used that to write a couple of scripts for the military. I also used it to write my resume.

In Las Vegas, I bought an IBM and have had various iterations of the PC ever since.

The pictured Royal *is* the exact model I learnt to type on. Well, truth be told, I never did learn to type - I still hunt and peck, but I do so upwards to 60 wpm.

That photo brings back memories of sitting on a flimsy folding chair in the basement, that massive typewriter bouncing a bit on the thin wood of the ping-pong table with each keystroke while I transcribed the Star Trek episode "The Ultimate Computer" and wrote my first 60-page "novel" - a really awful Doc Savage clone.

Ah, nostalgia!

Loved h.s. typing class for the same reasons as you and jig - the speed and scenery. Mighty helpful for the journalism major later on, too.

Started with a h.s. graduation present -- a portable, all plastic Smith-Corona, then the Selectric, then the amazing magical experience of the Kaypro, one of the first "portable" PCs ever marketed. Wrote my first three scripts on that. Still have it in storage. Apple IIci, then the start of a long line of PowerBooks (doing double-duty: work and writing).

Today, I've returned to writing in long-hand, then retyping the pages into FD. The tactile experience of pressing point to paper is one of few pleasurable triggers in what has become increasing more difficult these days -- to write well, at a high level, thoughtfully and critically.

Slowing down seems to help take the writing deeper... or so my delusions tell me...;-)

Ahh, High School typing class. The teacher, Mr. Brooks, was also the basketball coach. After the 15 minute lesson, he would hold court at his desk with the jocks, and everyone else did whatever. I would write half page surreal/funny/satiric stories. My friends really enjoyed them, especially when I skewered a despised teacher, or wrote about my lovable-loser alter-ego, Gilroy. Writing something that provokes the laughter of your friends is a powerful narcotic, and I've been chasing those first high's ever since.

I love typewriters and wish that computers weren't easier. A couple months ago I was in a Goodwill store, looking around and down on the ground I see this black case and I'm like, "There's a typewriter in there."

I pick it up and sure enough there's a 1941 Royal Quiet De Lux. $20. The carriage slide was broken though, but even with the cost of repairs and cleaning it was still a steal.

I use every now and then to write letters and thank you notes.

The interesting thing I've found with using a typewriter is that 1) either you have to compose longhand first and then you're just copying it or 2) you really have to slow down a bit when composing. It really forces you to think because there's no real "delete."

I'm young so I was never forced to use one for typing but I do love the look, sound, feel of a typewriter.

But nowawdays I can't imagine the annoyance of writing a script on a typewriter. The formatting alone would be such a pain in the ass.

I wrote some of my first scripts on word and THAT was a pain. Then again, some of the greatest scripts ever written were probably done so on a typewriter, so maybe there's something there.

I got that as a gift from my parents as I headed of to UVA. I'd actually learned on an IBM Selectric in perhaps the single best high school class I ever took: typewriting.

It was 1984. I was a h.s. sophomore. I was all set (in my mind) on going to Cornell to be a farmer. Then, one day before school I accompanied a friend into the h.s. computer room -- and it was literally my "chorus of angels" moment. I had discovered computers.

I eventually received 2 degrees in computer science from Rensselaer. But my point of all this is isn't to brag. Rather, it's to say that, every time I was asked which classes prepared me best for college, despite all the math and science I took in h.s. (which I did really, really need in college), I always say - seemingly flippantly but really quite seriously - "Learning how to touch-type in tenth grade."

(it was also on an IBM Selectric.)

It's funny, I had no idea people would get nostalgic, even philosophical about a post on typewriters, but I have really enjoyed reading your posts.

I'm really tempted by jimmyt's suggestion: After finishing a first draft, instead of editing the preexisting draft, start a new file and edit from a hard copy of the draft into the new file. I'll bet that would help you trim the fat.

As a point of reference, when I had an overall deal with Warner Bros for three years up through 1990, they were still having a bevy of typists they employed who would take what a screenwriter turned in, then re-type it into these ancient computer systems so it fit their specific formatting margins and so forth.

In fact when K-9 sold, the execs at 20th Century Fox barely had computers. I remember walking up and down the hallways going to meetings, hearing the clackety clack clack of assistants typing away on typewriters. That was 1987.

I recall typing up papers on a manual typewriter around 1980, but I was only in fifth grade, so I have no idea what model it was. We also had a computer, but writing a paper on the VIC-20 was just not in the cards.

Once my family got a Mac 512K in 1984, we never went back, but the solid click of key hitting paper is a sound I'm still quite fond of. And I'm sure my preference for keyboards whose keys have a distinct click derives from those early days.

I LOVED my Smith-Corona. Bought it with the money I made baby-sitting. I remember my girlfriends at the time saying they would have bought shoes instead. I always loved banging those keys.