Field Notes: On Writing Past Resistance

my vintage Olivetti typewriter

I shared on Everything Writerly that not too long ago I found myself staring at my vintage typewriter in a bit of a trance. It sits in plain view on a book shelf in a small corner of my attic apartment in Rome. My typewriter doesn’t look particularly good there but I like having it in view as a visible invitation to write – oh the possibility of words!

I was staring at the keys, thinking about typing something out but not doing it, thinking about what I could write but not writing. This is such dangerous territory for a writer, the getting stuck in the thinking part of the writing process over the actual writing part of the process. 

Turning to analog tools, like a typewriter, often helps me move out of the resistance part of a writing project. Old manual typewriters are exactly that – hands on – and sometimes that’s exactly what I need to get writing.

I have so many fond memories involving typewriters. Here are three:

• my grandfather tapping out letters on a corner desk;

• the clacking of a room full of seventh graders helping a brown fox jump over a lazy dog… get it?;

and my favorite typewriter memory of all:

• love notes left on a rescued typewriter that sat in the foyer of our home

tap, tap, tap…

I got my first vintage typewriter when my son was little. We bought it a thrift shop so he could learn how to type. I set it on a little table in our foyer and we would take turns typing out words. Soon, the words became sentences … Shortly after that the typewriter became a family message center…An old typewriter became a fountain of creativity. We wrote letters, lists, poems; we posted warnings and grievances and declarations. Our typewritten missives became airplanes the cat would chase…

You’re allowed to be playful in this writing pursuit.

Writing doesn’t always begin with discipline. Sometimes writing begins with a memory.

You can read the full reflection here. I hope it inspires you to move past resistance and write anyway. And maybe even play with a typewriter!

did you know that a pangram is a sentence that contains every letter of a Greek or Latin based alphabet? Like a quick brown fox…

Read the complete piece on Everything Writerly →