I'm all for typewriters, with instant carbon copies, and seeing films in cinemas.
It took me 20 years to buy an electric typewriter, because I was afraid it would be too sensitive. I like to bang the keys. I'm doing action stories, so that's the way I like to do it.
I've had someone, my assistant, type for me. I've done it that way for more than 50 years because I type with one finger, although quite rapidly.
I write on the typewriter. I like it because I like the feeling of making something with my hands. I like pressing the key and a letter comes up and is printed on a piece of paper. I can understand that.
I like the sound a typewriter makes.
With a computer, you make your changes on the screen and then you print out a clean copy. With a typewriter, you can't get a clean manuscript unless you start again from scratch. It's an incredibly tedious process.
I type most of my books for the first chapter or two - I use a manual typewriter for the first 50 pages or so - and then I move to the computer. It helps me keep the work lean so I don't end up spending 10 pages describing a leaf.
I write every first draft - almost every draft, but certainly the first - by hand on blank white pieces of paper, so I don't know how long it is as I'm writing; it just piles up, and then I input it all in my computer, and I learn how long it is.
I'm not a computer guy. I have my Smith Corona. I would know nothing about computers.
Most of my early work was done on typewriter. And the only way to iterate drafts was to re-type it.
I would write my editorials using a manual typewriter in pitch-black darkness... I would produce the whole thing without having seen the text.
I am a terrible, terrible typist. I could not have been a writer in the age of typewriters.
I still use a typewriter from time to time, but because I can't type as well as I used to, I really don't use one very much.
