manual typing

Cute little TV thing about typewriters at http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7397608n&tag=contentMain%3BcontentBody 

  

I have a big Olympia office manual in my office at MIT -- maybe the only one on campus.  I bought it about thirty years ago because Harlan Ellison raved about them and let me try his.

Have to admit that I don't use it very often; the MacBook Air is too comfortable and foolproof.  I did write a few books (notably The Hemingway Hoax) on manuals, retyping the text into the computer.  Most of the time I write fiction and poetry in longhand, though, for the first draft.

I still have the beautiful little Royal, red enamel Art Deco, that I bought out of a shop window in Iowa City almost forty years ago.  Thirty-five bucks well spent.  Wrote parts of MINDBRIDGE and ALL MY SINS REMEMBERED on it.  Looks like this --

http://mrtypewriter.tripod.com/royal1...

Anybody else out there so retro as to use one?

Joe