by
Nate the writer
by
Nate the writer
I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a luddite. It's such an ugly word for such a beautiful thing, but it sounds great on my Remington portable. My Remington makes it beautiful. I try to arrange the words in the sentence so that luddite is the one that rings the bell.
I write short stories in my spare time. I started out writing them on my computer, but I found that I was too easily distracted with the wide-open Internet only a few clicks away. Typewriters keep me away from the Internet and focused on the task at hand. Whereas I used to be hypnotized by the soothing light of a computer screen, now I lose myself in the charming clacking and ringing of my typewriter.
I think my infatuation with typewriters began when I read On the Road by Kerouac. After I heard that he typed the whole thing on a portable Underwood with a long scroll of paper, it was all I could think about while I read. I could imagine him puffing on his cigarette and pounding away at the keys like a madman on a benny-induced writing binge. Kerouac stayed focused on the manuscript for long stretches of time. Of course he didn't have the Internet to contend with, but he had to work behind closed doors, because I doubt there was a cafe in town that would welcome the pounding of typewriter keys--even Kerouac's. I bought one of the antiquated machines, taped ten sheets of paper together, and went to town.
I like typing on my typewriter, because I have to write more deliberately. I'm also a big fan of Walden, so I took Thoreau's thoughts on living deliberately to heart. Thoreau had to think further ahead when he left modern convenience behind. Paper wasn't cheap back then, and if he screwed up, there wasn't a bottle o' white out on his desk to fix his slips. I guess he dealt with the same kind of responsibility trying to survive in his cabin. He grew several acres of beans to trade and eat to survive. He couldn't approach that work casually or he'd starve.
If I f*** up on the typewriter, I'm not going to starve, but it's still pretty unpleasant. The thought of typing over that white out junk is unpleasant enough to keep me engaged in the writing process. It forces me to think about each sentence before I commit it to paper. Mistakes are real, physical, time-consuming things on my Remington. They cost real ink and paper, so writing feels more real. I bet I made twenty mistakes writing the manuscript of this thing. I have trouble duplicating my letters. At one point it looked like a term paper on Typee. That said, I'm still not going back. Dig my Remington wrath.
About the author, Nate Cougill: "I write short stories and literary criticism. I'm a college student from Nashville, Tennessee. I plan to spend the rest of my life searching for an octuple entendre and typing love letters to Paris Hilton on a Caligraph."
