Paper Mate

A fellow named Paul Riddell has a saying: I love living in the future. This generally refers to all the cool gadgets and technologies we have at our disposal: Just a few decades ago home computers, iPods, video games – all of these would have seemed pretty incredible. For people who grew up primarily before the digital explosion, the last twenty years or so has just been one marvel after another.

You know what I miss, though? My manual typewriter.

Oh, I still have it. I just don’t use it much. I used to; I used to write everything on it. I have filing cabinets stuffed with manuscripts, and it was glorious, pounding away at that monster, almost like carving the sentences on the page. Of course, the benefits of the word processor are too many to list, and even a Luddite like me had to give in eventually – at first it was just clean final revisions, but now I write everything on the PC and the manual typewriter collects dust.

One thing hasn’t changed: I still write short stories in a noteboook, longhand, using blue and white Paper Mate pens:

Ah, the ole’ blue and white. I won’t use anything else. If my pen dies and I don’t have an extra, I stop working. It’s just superstition, and I can’t really explain it, but I refuse to use anything else.

And to be honest, I can’t imagine what would ever change my process and cause me to abandon a technology that is several thousand years old. This isn’t an indictment of modern technology or a statement in favor of universal adoption of paper and pen by all writers; it’s just me and what I like. For my process, I can’t imagine what could possibly happen to make me utilize a different tool to write shorts. Unless, perhaps, a trained monkey at a keyboard I could dictate to. No, wait, I take it back: NOTHING WILL PRY MY CHEAP PAPER MATES FROM MY HANDS.

As technological advancement speeds along, of course, these sorts of decisions start to look crazy. I remember, when I was a wee kid, watching an episode of Lou Grant (all ye children, Google it; you didn’t miss anything) wherein a blackout paralyzes the newspaper office except for the crusty old reporter who’d always refused to use an electric typewriter. Back in the mid 1970s refusing an electric typewriter in favor of a manual was eccentric. Sticking with the manual in 2008 would be insane. That’s where I am, I guess.

Of course, when I like a story I’ve written I key it into the word processor (Open Office). I’m eccentric, not stupid.

Now I read how kids these days aren’t learning cursive handwriting any more, so my short story notebooks are slowly turning into secret codebooks that only I will be able to read. So I’d better get keyboarding, if only for my legacy. It’s going to get weirder and weirder to keep writing stories longhand as time goes on – though eventually I’ll be visibly old enough to qualify as an “old coot” and no one will worry about it any more, as my every foible will be ascribed to age and infirmity. I can’t wait! And the final joke will be that when I’m that old my handwriting will be illegible anyway.