The legacy of words

One of the blogs I enjoy reading belongs to Icess Fernandez Rojas, and today she posted a letter to her readers.  The following is an excerpt:

I took to writing the last scene of the latest Jennie Manning story on my typewriter. I like using it and wished I could use it more often. There’s something about the way the keys hit the page. There’s a connection to the words there, an authenticity that a computer screen can’t duplicate. I’m not sure that authenticity is the right word but it’s the right sentiment, the trueness of the experience of writing. This is what I’m referring to — the purposefulness of words (since there is no deleting or backspacing), the rhythm of the keys tied to the fingertips, then the arms, the shoulder, the neck, the brain. That delicious, intoxicating rhythm when the brain is practically drilling the story onto the blank page. This is something that a typewriter can do that a computer can’t.  –Icess Fernandez Rojas

I love the way she describes the process of writing with a typewriter, especially as it so closely mirrors my own feelings about writing longhand.  I write all my stories longhand, and the pencil is my writing tool of choice because I just can’t stand to have a page full of scribbles where I’ve made mistakes and I don’t have enough White-Out to get me through a whole project.

Plus, there’s only so much White-Out you can put on a page.

Anyway, if you haven’t checked out her site already, what the heck are you waiting for?

(c) 2014.  All rights reserved.

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4 thoughts on “The legacy of words

  1. Roger says:

    I wrote four books with a felt pen and my fingers were irretrievably bent. Now I use a keyboard. If I were to use a typewriter It would take me a day to get one page down, and that would be littered with mistakes since without a backspace my world would end.

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    • Kay Kauffman says:

      I sometimes have to use a typewriter at work, which makes me extremely grateful for White-Out tape. I don’t make mistakes all that often, but when I do, they seem to keep happening. Thank goodness for backspace keys on computers and erasers on pencils!

      Incidentally, I’ve suffered from curled fingers, but it wasn’t related to writing.

      Like

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