The Value of Typing Slower
I once told a university professor that when doing creative writing I tended to write to the end of a sheet of paper and stop. He frowned and advised me to get longer paper.
At my first newspaper job, they gave us butt ends of yellowish paper rolls from an old teletype machine to use in our typewriters. This saved the expense of typewriter paper. We placed a roll of paper behind the typewriter, or, better yet, in a box on the floor so it wouldn’t roll away, guided the loose end onto a typewriter platen, and we could write stories that might be three feet long before they were torn off to be edited by hand. Given my previous habit of one-page stories, this may have saved my career.
I am a better writer now than then because practice makes anyone better, but I think I was a more efficient writer using a manual typewriter, which had keys that could go only so fast – about the same speed as I could think. When I was done composing a piece, I would have typing errors to fix and verbiage to clean up but usually few major issues. This is essential to the deadline writer. Maybe the last thing I needed was what I wanted and what I eventually got – a machine that would give me the ability to type faster than my capacity for clear thought.
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.