Typewritten

Limited in All the Right Ways

August 4th, 2023

As you can see from the above text, sometimes mistakes are part of the process. Those are things that I’d just edit out, obviously, in any other medium for presentation. However, I just don’t want to. If I ever transcribe these posts into some other medium, I’ll go over them and fix ’em then. It’s not that they don’t bother me, it’s just that I’d go through a lot of paper.

Also, I’m probably not using correction fluid. That feels like a bridge too far for posts such as these.

On a typewriter technical note, I find that the rollers in the Quiet DeLuxe don’t have nearly as much trouble grabbing that sheet. It was a slightly lighter weight than I’d been using and it seems to have made a tremendous difference. Since we’re discussing how tools influence your process, I’ll state that my process involved a lot less fiddling with the paper and trying to get it to be properly aligned. That was a pleasant experience.
Cover Songs

August 3rd, 2023

This is another post that exists to convince myself of something and solidify my own arguments. At least, it’s as much that as something I want to put out into the world; maybe it’ll be useful! I’m usually very hesitant to write anything if I suspect that someone else already covered the idea to some greater or lesser extent. I’d like to get over that.

I do have a couple notes about the execution of the post itself:

The last sentence in the second-to-last paragraph is so clunky as to almost be nonsensical. I had intended to write “I’m arguing both you and myself into the idea” but what came out of my fingers is what you see up there. I’m not about to waste another piece of paper to re-write the whole thing and avoid one awful sentence. Another small mistake to live with, this is the way of things.

I also typed a few letters in a burst of speed that the machine couldn’t keep up with so well – it’s really evident in “consciously” and “material.” I want to call attention to that because it’s a clue as to how fast one can actually type on a typewriter that works well. That said, if I was better at operating these things, that kind of error wouldn’t happen – I just got ahead of myself and treated it like a computer keyboard, briefly.

Whoops!
Tech Thoughts

August 1st, 2023

I will admit that this one is half-baked but that just means that I have fertile ground to improve this idea later. I just really didn’t want to get back in the habit of not writing and posting something with a degree of regularity.
The Initial Hurdle

July 29th, 2023

I figured I’d write about this instead of what I was going to write about tonight. Mostly because I experienced the exact situation that I describe above where I decided my initial idea had too many holes in it to make a good post.

Generally, I’m uncomfortable with the idea that I have anything useful to say in the first place. I don’t want to spend effort and put things online if I don’t actually use that effort to say something useful. It’s very much a “who am I to say such things?” question I pose to myself. I suppose that’s the second hurdle and it’ll be coming out in typewritten form tomorrow.

The answer to that, by the way, is probably best phrased as “who cares?” It’s unlikely that I will develop anything useful to say by not practicing.

In a technical note, I one of the rollers on the typewriter I used for this doesn’t like gripping this paper very much. You can see the effect of that a little where the thing decided to almost mash one line into another in the second paragraph. It eventually got its act together and the rest of the document is actually relatively well-aligned. If it wasn’t for trying to overcome those quirks, I don’t think this would be half as fun as it is.
Opposing Forces

July 28th, 2023

I’m not entirely happy with this one, but it came off my machine and I feel like I have to post it as a result. I don’t post everything, of course, but I’m trying to widen the funnel a little bit because, as expressed above, one of the goals here is to just get used to the idea that I put work out there for people to read. If it’s not the best work, that’s fine – we’ll both be uncomfortable about it, then.

In terms of the production of this one, I am way happier with how the text is readable on a computer screen. I think the typewriter has some alignment issues that I’ll get around to correcting eventually. The machine that produced it (a Royal Quiet DeLuxe) is quickly becoming my favorite to use. Somehow the platen has life in it despite being original to the machine. I don’t know how that might be possible but I’m not questioning it.
To Play the Guitar

July 27th, 2023

Further thoughts along the same line as an earlier post. I just realized that I didn’t specify that these guitar lessons were jazz lessons. I figure it’s a little important to the narrative I was trying to build because that tends to be a bit more demanding, in terms of what you need to execute on your instrument, than singer/songwriter stuff. That difficulty caused some serious overthinking, which was ameliorated by the thought “to play the guitar, you have to play the guitar.” But since I have the benefit of text formatting down here, I’ll say it thusly:

To play the guitar, you have to play the guitar. The gist of it was that there isn’t anything that you should do that you aren’t doing anyway – just play the instrument as best you can and keep learning. This holds for solo work and ensemble work. I assume the mindset holds for most things you can get up to unless it’s like, surgery or something. That has a high enough margin for error that you maybe shouldn’t take my advice for that.

Also, I’m noticing that the typeface of that typewriter doesn’t really play so well on a screen. It looks great on paper. The machine in question (a Lettera 22) is really fun to work with but I might not use it as much if it produces stuff that’s difficult to read. It did make the phrase “stuck in a rut” look a lot like “stuck in a rat” which is kind of funny and also a rough predicament.

Don’t get stuck in a rat, if you can help it.
Doing the Thing

June 23rd, 2023

It took me a while to get this update out because I was without a good, dedicated writing space and couldn’t be bothered to set one up with various other projects that were taking place.

This is the first post that touches on what I was intending to do with this blog in that I just want practice with sending my work somewhere. I want to grow accustomed to the idea that this stuff is available to be seen. Sometimes it’s not a comfortable thought.

Also, excitingly, I think I’ve devised a method by which I can finally fix the tilted text. When I saw what I could do, it made me feel like an idiot for not realizing it sooner. Then again, I didn’t grow up working with typewriters so maybe I have to rediscover some techniques on my own.
I Tried to Use A Word Processor

April 17th, 2023

Of course I still know how to use a word processor to just get something done. But I thought reporting on the result of this little experiment had some merit.

We can use the abstracted idea of the page to type a bunch of stuff out and get work done that way but it doesn’t mean that it’s the best fit for all situations. I think examining the manner in which we work has significant value.
An Olivetti Recommendation

April 9th, 2023

I’m actually going to start this with some non-typewritten text because I sort of hope this one is more easily found given that it raises some questions.

Also, because I couldn’t figure out how to properly encapsulate the topic in the title. I was leafing through a reprint of the old user’s manual and discovered a recommendation that surprised me a little bit. It also demonstrated, without question, how little I actually know about the usage of these machines even though not that much time has passed since they fell out of common usage.

I find knowledge loss, even something kind of inconsequential, to be a little alarming.

So, as promised, this is the link to the Olivetti Lettera 22 Typewriter Repair Bible. I picked up a copy of that and this more general version, and they’ve already proven useful in filling in some gaps in what I knew about typewriters. Like, for instance, giving me insight into how the double whitespacing issue I’ve been dealing with (evidenced above in a few spots) is a case of user error and the way to fix it is to get good.

I also have a few machines sitting around that are in line for some restoration and I didn’t want to wade into that battle without equipping myself appropriately.

I wasn’t particularly satisfied with how I worded some of the stuff above, on the actual page, but learning to live with that has been doing wonders for just getting the work published. I have noticed that I’m making fewer errors as I write but I’m not really sacrificing any speed. That’s been an exciting process.
Permanence

April 6th, 2023

This one wasn’t just tilted (I’m working on it, still), but in a grand stroke of comedy the scanner ate up the left side of the document. Nothing like suggesting that this stuff is weirdly durable and then passing it through a gentle machine that somehow wrecks part of it.

Anyway, it’s still easily human-readable. There is a gulf of difference between “machine-digestible” and “human-readable” and this, presuming it doesn’t further rip apart over time, will persist pretty well.

Sure wish I could fix the tilting issue, though. Nothing like having your work represented through time with a hard slope.