Thoughts on my Typewriter and Writing

Thoughts on my Typewriter and Writing

18/10/09

In my room sits the typewriter. It is black, manual, old and nostalgic for many absent someones, but to me it is still new. My room is a riot of colour, ivy garlands, posters, crystals and chimes. But the typewriter is in a little alcove, and the walls of it are a lavender blank.

It is a space to breathe.

A small pile of pages lies to the right, it yearns to grow. The pages are typed with double-spaced words.

A large pile of pages lies to the left, it yearns to be diminished. The pages are blank.

A sheet goes into the machine. I wind it to the top, feeding it through dark metal. I centre the page. Title and date. I scroll down and move to the left, to the marks where my margins go. I estimate by sight. I get it right. A perfect margin to the left, but be careful of the margin to the right, be aware of it. Sometimes the words try to go over the page and into the ether so I must watch them. There is no deletion, what I press remains. There is no room for error. Any errors must stay in the first round.

If I am brilliant I will make no errors, I will be an Issac Asimov and be able to take the first manuscript and publish it. But I am not brilliant, not yet.

Errors stay and look at me, and show me what I need to improve. As well as no deletion, there is no exclamation mark on my machine. In the 1920's did no one exclaim? I think this lack is a gift, like a geas laid by a druid to avoid something that might otherwise do harm.

Be kind to others but harsh to yourself. However as fellow writers, as comrades, we should be harsh to eachother, but mingle kindness with the harshness as well. If our standards for eachother and ourselves are high, think of the things we will achieve. Everyone wants different things of course, different styles. This is the beauty of discovering our hide and seek community. Still we all should be brilliant at whatever it is that we do.

So do not say my work is good unless it truly is. Feel free to rip into my words, but do not attempt to rip into my soul. My soul and my words are intertwined, writing is such a personal thing. But I can separate words from soul, like an alchemist. Eventually I will transmute words and soul into textual gold, but it will take my life, my dedication, my conviction.

This typewriter of mine is not connected to the internet. I can not easily research mythology from it, instead I look at its black pieces and reach into my memory. With a lack of internet there is a lack of facebook, of social networking, of msn messenger, of online games, of vauge interesting links on obscure information that is not relevant to what I am writing. There is no distractions. Lovely. No wonder the people of the past could produce so much. Our age seems to encourage distractions and impediments as an essential part of our lifestyle. If I were a stronger person I could avoid the internet while using my PC. At times I disconnect the network cable. But there is something about this typewriter that I adore.

Maybe I am weak-willed, and it offers me simplicity. But it is harder to write on a typewriter in some ways, what I write becomes solid and fixed. Tangible, and I crave tangibility, in this age where we do not touch.

I read a piece aloud in my courtyard while the sun sets and storm clouds gather, sitting on the paving stones. My housemate/ex-boyfriend indulges me and listens then it starts to rain. He urges me inside. I stay out, barely sheltered, feeling wild and romantic and not caring if the words are destroyed. He goes inside and shuts the door and I have no audience. It begins to pour heavily and I shield the page with my body. I move the page indoors and follow my body after. My housemate wants me to thank him for his practicality, and I should of course, but I feel he does not understand or approve or allow my contrary illogical romanticism and so I am sullen for a while instead.

But there is nothing higher, no opium or modern derivative, no sexual encounter, that is higher than reading a first draft aloud while the words ring and roll with clarity and the writer feels brilliant and accomplished for a moment. The feeling fades and I know to get my fix I must write more, always more. This is what the typewriter urges me to do. When I sleep it awaits me.

I think about the practicalities of life, I think about how I must gain employment and wonder what I can stand to do (write) besides writing. I think about how I am so confused about my uni course and how I hate how the minors and electives intrude and detract from the writing and I have to be academic (write) and perfect and intelligent. I think of how women at the sunshine coast seem to be married and with children by my age of only 23 and I do want to find a partner I can love that will put up with me for an extended time and I do want to have many children and be a housewife and (write) I worry about the possibility of winding up alone, a spinster who (writes) has only the company of her books and cats (and typewriter).

I think of daily things, boring things, and become unhappy. The pressure in the back of my skull builds until the sensible side falls away, I give in to my need and I write torrential tangled words. I find I am myself in that moment and I am free and perfectly happy until my guilt over writing wells up in me again.

Writing will probably not earn me a living or support my potential future children or solve the global and local problems that I feel is my responsibility to fix. So why be so selfish and impractical as to write?

Writing is more sacred than prayer, deeper, more mysterious. It is more important than food and water, but I must remember that I need food and water, otherwise I can not continue to write.