How the **** did they cope?

aruna said:

A lot of people of questionable talent think that just because they can use words, they can become published authors.

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People think that just because they can read, they can be manuscript editors, too, without having any apprenticeship or mentoring and without studying usage manuals. Their work gives the field a bad name.

Pencilone said:

On the other hand, I believe that writing fast also means writing good. And I don't mean writing polished prose, but writing more interesting ideas, turns and unexpected twists, as we can let the unconscious surface without the usual barriers made by conscious thoughts. I think even Ray Bradbury was saying in his "Zen in the Art of Writing" write and don't think.

For me, the quicker I write, the more accessible the Muse is, and all the usual writer's blocks (like self doubt or the inner editor's sabotages) have less of a chance to bother me. That's why I'm all for fast writing for the first draft or for the outline, or draft 0, or whatever name you want to call it, till it's reviewed and polished.

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Absolutely. I don't like writing with pen because it's just too slow. During first draft, the words are poring out and I couldn't keep up using pen and paper - my writing would be illegible! So i do appreciate the PC, and when I hear of literary writers (especially Germans - they all love to say this) going on about hw usin a pen they write so slowly and how that makes them better writers I shake my head.
I welcome the day when somebody invents a gadget that will traspose thoughts directly on to paper - without the use of hands at all... because even the PC is too slow. Too many typos are the result.

Garpy said:

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I know this....if someone told me I could only be allowed to write on a typewriter, I'd go find another job.

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Ah, the days of the old typewriter, yes! I miss the old plunkety-plunk of the manual ones. Those were my favorites. H*ll, if I had one, I'd use it just for the nostalgia.

My very favorite typewriter was an old beat-up Underwood Portable in a plain black wooden case. That was a machine! Oh, I loved it. Too bad one of the characters came flying off one day as I was typing along. Had to toss the entire darned thing.

Seriously, I enjoyed writing on the typewriter, and I would love to get my hands on a vintage Royal or Underwood Manual, just for the nostalgia of it. I keep thinking that having one would enhance my creativity again, just like it did when I was a teenager and had plenty of access to them. Computers were rather spendy then, and most people--this was back in the mid-80's, BTW--still did most of their typing on the typewriters.

[Edited to Add: The best thing about a typewriter was that you didn't have to wait for the thing to boot up. You just put the paper into the carriage and started typing. That was the main beauty of it, and the fact that you could hear the typewriter going a mile away. It sounded like work was getting done, which is a sound I somewhat miss these days with the hum of the computer and the glare of the monitor. I know writing will transcend any writing device that comes along, but I still miss, to some extent, the old typewritten manuscripts of the past. That's a day I would like to revisit, if only because I was at the height of my creativity in those days.]

Jamesaritchie said:

The computer mouse actually causes far more carpal tunnel than manual typewriters ever did. The mouse is the bad guy, not a keyboard.

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This is quite correct. I was taught when first learning computers, that because computer word processors have a feature known as 'Word Wrap,' (where the need to use the 'Return' Key at the end of a line is taken away) people can type and type and type and type without ever stopping. This is a far greater strain on the wrists and on the fingers than an old manual typewriter ever could be.

Manual typewriters had a long bar on the left end of the carriage that you had to stop, reach up, pull over to the right, and let go of, before you could go to the next line. This Carriage Return Bar (I'm not sure if that's the real term for it) allowed for the muscles in the wrists and fingers to rest, even if only for a moment, before moving on to the next line.

Even electronic typewriters and older electric typewriters, used a 'Return' key, which is located in the same place as the 'Enter' key on the computer keyboard, which you had to press each time you reached the end of a line, before moving on. Though the wait might have been only a split second, it was still a break in the repetitive movements your fingers and wrists constantly endure when dealing with typing.

I worked as a Page in my public library ten years ago, when they still had a typing room with electric typewriters available for public use. For nearly a year, there was a guy who came in every night to work on his screenplay.

He talked a big game about that screenplay, and I heard him clacking away for hours in there. It was my job to replenish his little slips of white-out, and to change the ribbon for him.

He came with penciled notes in a spiral notebook. He obviously left himself the option to erase and re-write lines of dialogue before ever commiting them to typeface, and I imagine he did some mental editing as he typed.

I imagine he re-edited, and re-typed many pages along his quest to perfect the blockbuster movie he saw in his head, but none of it did him any good. I never saw his face in the paper, or heard his name on the news. His movie never made it to the screen.

Would he have done any WORSE using MS Word?

Would he have done any better?

I don't beleive it's true that technology has unleashed a massive influx of bad writers who otherwise wouldn't have bothered. The thing about bad writers is, they'll use whatever means necessary to acheive their goals... and this may well include myself!

I know that if it were 1950, I'd still be slaving over the same stupid inspiration, armed with plenty of cheep paper and a typewriter that costs less than my modern computer did. I'd be corresponding with other writers through the post, and probably hashing out the same technical arguments with peers in my own town... or perhaps I'd have migrated to the nearest metropolis to argue the finer points of the craft with fellow writers.

They also had considerably fewer distractions in Shakespeare's time. He might have stare out his window at the countryside or gone for long walks through the forest when faced with writer's block. We can do those too, and we also have the internet, TV, telephones, DVDs, etc. For this reason I think they had more time to write. Other than the occasional mild outbreak of Black Death, what else could distract them?

What will people be using to write their manuscripts fifty years from now that will make them shake their heads at our ancient computers, and say, "I coulda never done it that way... those silly little freaks."

Mistook said:

I know that if it were 1950, I'd still be slaving over the same stupid inspiration, armed with plenty of cheep paper and a typewriter that costs less than my modern computer did. I'd be corresponding with other writers through the post, and probably hashing out the same technical arguments with peers in my own town... or perhaps I'd have migrated to the nearest metropolis to argue the finer points of the craft with fellow writers.

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Ah - but it takes much, much longer to finish a manuscript using a typewwriter, than using a PC. In the time I take to rewrite draft after draft after draft of a typewritten ms, I've written about 5 ful ones ona PC.
So a lot MORe gets written. True, a determined bad writer will use any means possible to write, and thgere have always been bad scipts . But there are also a lot of not-so-determined bad writers about, who will wruite simply bvecause it's so easy. I believe there are a lot MORE of these around now.

Just saw a picture in the newspaper of John Irving in his writing cabin up by Georgian Bay, north of Toronto. Only thing on his desk was a stack of manuscript pages, a glass paperweight on top of them, and an electric typewriter beside it. Also, IIRC, John Grisham writers all his manuscripts by hand on yellow legal pads.

Just another couple of data points.

Garpy said:

I've been reading some old novels by Nevil Shute....he wrote a lot of them back in the 50's-60's, on one of them old typewriter thing-a-ma-hoobies. And you know what? When I think about it...I'm amazed at how they managed to do it without the benefit of a PC/Mac.

Editing my recently finished MS, doing global search/replaces, cutting sections and pasting, deleting words, adding words. You just can't do that on a typwriter without having to retype the entire the entire chapter after each edit!!!

I suspect the major hassle of editing back in those pre-Gates days meant that what you read today of their works, pretty much resembles their first draft, with perhaps one or two minor editor-requested tweaks.

I know this....if someone told me I could only be allowed to write on a typewriter, I'd go find another job.

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My first book; the first draft was written in long hand on a pile of steno note pads. I keep it to this day and that was written almost 20 years ago and the second draft on an IBM Selectric Typewriter.. Enough about me.

Typewriters were the tool of the trade for many 20th Century Authors. Hemmingway kept an old Royal Typewriter on the top of a high boy dresser and did all his writing standing. If you look back into all the Icons of the writing craft you will find many many idiiosyncracies. It is just the recent or young writer's of today that are amazed by using methods other than a computer. Actually the computer can turn into a crutch just like the hand held calculator. With the advances in technology come the decreases in individual intellect. OOPS! I heard all the gasps.

No, actually when the calculator became such a common instrument for computing costs, doing intricate mathmatical problems, many of the users lost the ability to compute these problems in their head or on paper. We are doing the same thing with THE computer, with word searches, grammar check, etc., reducing the mental exercises that keep this knowledge fresh in our own intellect.

There is still nothing that can beat line by line, word by word re-reading, too many times too many "and's or they's" have been eliminated by using the quickie word searches. Same goes with the grammar check for punctuation, no matter what the computer may say, there are those places that NEED that coma.

gp101 said:

They also had considerably fewer distractions in Shakespeare's time. He might have stare out his window at the countryside or gone for long walks through the forest when faced with writer's block. We can do those too, and we also have the internet, TV, telephones, DVDs, etc. For this reason I think they had more time to write. Other than the occasional mild outbreak of Black Death, what else could distract them?

What will people be using to write their manuscripts fifty years from now that will make them shake their heads at our ancient computers, and say, "I coulda never done it that way... those silly little freaks."

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The words will float in thin air, thanks to microchip implants attached to the optic nerves. As they think the words, they will appear. Writers will compose novels against a blank wall in the living room, while sitting on the couch, or on the ceiling, while lying flat in bed.

Ten story buildings, crammed with hard drives, will hold the slush data of billions of bad writers, to be weeded through by spiderbots, who reject several million manuscripts a day, based solely on the presence of a passive sentence within the first paragraph. Millions more will be rejected for exceeding the limit for the word "That".

Mistook said:

The words will float in thin air, thanks to microchip implants attached to the optic nerves. As they think the words, they will appear. Writers will compose novels against a blank wall in the living room, while sitting on the couch, or on the ceiling, while lying flat in bed.

Ten story buildings, crammed with hard drives, will hold the slush data of billions of bad writers, to be weeded through by spiderbots, who reject several million manuscripts a day, based solely on the presence of a passive sentence within the first paragraph. Millions more will be rejected for exceeding the limit for the word "That".

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I could never do that. My thoughts do not come out the same way on paper as they start in my head...what a nightmare mess.

Spiderbots for editors...now I'm going to have nightmares for real!