Every now and then I get frustrated at the writing process. The words dry up and I start to procrastinate more and more. It usually starts with tweaking my writing app by changing themes and settings, or even the app itself. It usually ends with a full-on YouTube binge, which I justify by convincing myself that it is research or finding inspiration. But cats struggling to gain traction on a slippery floor, though hilarious, can’t be considered either research or inspiration.
So, I might wander around the house for a while, poking my head into drawers and cupboards in the vague hope of finding something amazing I forgot I owned. such as a nutmeg grater or a battery powered handheld fan with as much wind-generating capability as a terminally lazy moth.
Sometimes I rummage so deeply into a cupboard that I actually do uncover hidden treasure. An example of this happened the other day when I pulled out my ancient Panasonic electric typewriter. Ha! Perfect procrastination device if ever I saw one. I plugged it in, removed the cover, checked the ribbon was in place, wound some paper in and turned it on… and it appeared to be working fine. Why wouldn’t it be? It isn’t powered by Windows or Android.
I typed a few characters but didn’t see much on the page. I don’t recall it having an invisible
ink option. Not being one to give up at the first hurdle, I typed some more letters and as new ribbon emerged from the cartridge so did my gibberish begin to appear on the paper in all its inky black glory. I’d forgotten how crisp the type was, much sharper than even my laser printer.
Full procrastination mode engaged! I had a massive pile of A5 scrap paper so it was time to see if I could remember what the thing could do. Well, not much, as it turns out. No large headings, no different fonts (unless you purchased an alternative daisy wheel), no italics, no colour, etc. But those things were also part of the problem with my writing software on the Mac. Endless fiddling with making the document look pretty on the screen instead of actually writing the thing. I remembered the killer feature of writing on a typewriter—focus mode. No notifications (other than a stern beep when the end of the line approached). No pop-ups announcing an email or text had arrived, or a software update was ready, or a new like on Instagram or a new video available from a subscribed YouTube channel. Just an obedient typewriter waiting to whack marks onto a pristine piece of paper.
Then something happened. I remembered how much fun this thing was. I dug out the manual and realised it could do more than I gave it credit for. It could do bold and underline as well as centring text and it could even correct a mistake with a tap of the backspace key thanks to a memory buffer and a correction ribbon. It could even erase the whole df the current line, though you’d have enough time to grab a coffee while it did it.
The most surprising thing though was how it made you focus on your writing. There was only one problem—you ended up with a pile of paper instead of a nice computer file. One benefit of that is that you could go and sit in the garden or something and manually edit the pages with a red pen. (Other colours are available.)
Another great thing about the typewriter was how quickly you could churn out little motivational quotes or to do lists that you could keep to hand on your desk where it was less easy to forget about them. But the big problem remained: if I wanted to upload to a blog or create a lovely eBook then I somehow had to get that text from the paper into the computer.
As it turns out, Apple has made this a whole lot easier than it was the last time I discovered I had a typewriter. All you have to do is pick up your phone, take a photo of the page and the camera software extracts the text from the image and saves it to the clipboard. Then, thanks to Universal clipboard, it is instantly waiting on your Mac to be pasted into your writing app. The whole process is embarrassingly quick and painless. This entire article was written on the typewriter, pulled into the Mac via the phone camera, edited with Ulysses and posted to the blog within an hour, giving me the rest of the day to get back to those cats on YouTube.
I have found it to be a wonderful way of working. You kind of feel more like a writer when you use a typewriter. There is also one more benefit to this system—you have a hard copy of your work which is invaluable if your computer decides to play up and lose your work, which they seem to like doing on a regular basis. I also find you proofread better with actual pages rather than squinting at a computer screen.
So, if you remember you have an old typewriter stashed away in the attic I would suggest you fetch it down and see if it is still serviceable. If that’s the case then why not have a play with it? You might find it helps you to write more too. Don’t worry too much about typos, they happen and it is only about getting a first draft done anyway. But just think: some of the greatest works of literature were written on a typewriter. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t still be useful machines in 2026.