clues at the scene

clues at the scene

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Big Ones Into Little Ones

At left, Mr. Hemingway's typewriter from his Key West studio.

Acroterion allows us to use their photograph through the creative commons license on wikicommons and for that, I am quite grateful. Thanks! Lovely framing. Nice focus, too.

The title today deals with turning big rocks into little ones by way of pounding them with a sledge hammer: the cliche punishment of depression-era criminals.

I'm a pounder. I beat the living shit out of my keyboard. Horrible.

I've joked here that I am a drunken chimp in my typing skills. Turns out, chimps are also amazingly strong.

Now, I'm not amazingly strong but I type like I'm the Hulk. Pound. Pound. Pound.

The more I'm into the flow, the harder I type. I've broken two laptops. Yes, that hard.

Ernie used a mechanical. Looks like an Underwood to me but I'd be glad to hear from someone who knows. I'm not the Sherlock of typewriters. Before my time to some degree.

I've had a Remington portable, a Royal (govt second hand $20), an IBM Selectric II, and another Royal - a safari model 1963 -  whose loss pains me to this day. Lovely machine.

Stolen from a hotel room in Rome I was slow getting back to one weekend ...

Anyway, I pound the keys.

I use a mechanical keyboard plugged into the usb port of various laptops. I'm getting good mileage out of this das keyboard model. I'm growing to like it.

I'd suggest anyone pounding out novels look into these mechanical keyboards, too.

Really helps the accuracy of the typing.

The writing - well. I'm not sure it does anything at all for the writing.

I have to go do something about the writing now, myself.

So do you.

2 comments:

Elizabeth Spann Craig said...

I must be like the Hulk, too. I type very, very loudly on my laptop. I told my husband the other day that I'd worked in the library and he asked, "How?" Apparently concerned that the other patrons might not have been able to read over the din.

Mechanical keyboard in the USB port. Hmm.

jack welling said...

Must be the crime element in the typing.

We want the reader to feel every bullet, every candlestick blow.

Ok, maybe not.