Writing a Novel on a Typewriter
The year was 1974. I'd already written two novels that I knew were apprentice work. I believed I was ready to write something publishable. I had a story, an outline and a 100-page hand-written day-in-the-life of the protagonist.
I had beat to hell the portable Smith-Corona that had carried me through college, and I was in the market for a new typewriter. My mother said wait a minute. She hauled out a standard desktop Underwood typewriter from her attic. Actually, the machine was so heavy because of the cast iron frame that she could budge it, and I hauled it out. The typewriter had been in the attic since 1956, when the original owner, my uncle, died.
I had it cleaned and oiled and installed a new ribbon. No repairs necessary. The machine worked beautifully, so much more solid and responsive than my Smith-Corona.
I started by sketching out a scene in longhand. I typed in the standard format of the day, one inch margins, typescript double-spaced. I would not move to the next page until the one I was working on was as a good as I could make it. When I completed a page, I would take it out of the typewriter, pencil-edit it, and retype the page. Three, four, six, ten or more times, until I had a page I could be proud of. The idea of a "rough draft" was unacceptable. The process led me to a breakthrough insight: my best ideas for improving the scene came in the act of retyping.
I worked two hours a day, six days a week for four years to complete one draft, but that was all I needed. The manuscript found an agent and a publisher in a major press very quickly. The book got rave reviews across the nation and won a citation from what is now the PEN Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Now thirty-eight years later THE DOGS OF MARCH is still in print.
And I still own the typewriter my mother gave me. It still works. I still use it once in a while for that wonderful feeling of striking a key.