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Owning a typewriter is no longer as common as it was fifty years ago. Many people who still have one at home either store it in an unused room or have it on their office shelf as a remembrance of their parents. Meanwhile, a select few who use theirs to this day see so much newfound value in a typewriter that they acquired a few more of these machines later on. I, for one, have nine, and that's small compared to more serious aficionados. (I am looking at you, Mr. Tom Hanks.)
I am extending this invitation to my fellow select few. Nonetheless, those who have never touched a typewriter in their lives are free to participate, too!
At heart, I am a firm believer that the resurgence of typewriters in the last twenty years was born out of a human desire to stay connected to our roots. Despite the seemingly "offline," tactile nature of typewriting—not being able to instantly share it on social media—somehow it satisfies our urge to communicate on a different level, perhaps not just with others but even more with ourselves.
And if we revisit decades, even a century ago, you'd see that typewriting played a major role in relaying personal messages of yore. Now I am not going to bore you with common historical knowledge. Still, it needs to be said that that aspect of typewriting makes the activity all the more sympathetic, nay romantic.
Hence, this project was born out of a desire for typewriter romance.
As part of the community of enthusiasts, with every encounter with a typewriter, I am constantly mesmerized by its rich history, masterful engineering, innovative design, and the amount of DNA it accumulated from its former owners. Even so, I feel that all of these still suggest a surface-level attraction to the whole affair. I yearn for a next-stage connection with my typewriter. I want to go beyond the type-test lines and the to-do lists. I want to naturally let out longer, more genuine streams of thoughts sprawled onto blank sheets of paper. I came to the conclusion that writing a letter would inspire me to do just that, and I think you would be inspired, too, if you haven't been already.
This project was born out of a desire for typewriter romance.
Thus, the dawn of the Typewritten Today project.
As many of you could already imagine, writing on a typewriter is very different from writing on a computer. Otherwise, I doubt the late great novelist, Ernest Hemingway, would go on to say that "writing is rewriting" if he were tapping away on a MacBook. I believe he also meant "rewriting" quite literally. In the 20th century, writers retyped multiple pages, entire chapters, so their manuscripts would be editor-ready. These draft versions are exactly what I want to compile—displaying even the typos, type-overs, and handwritten notes of your letters in all their imperfect glory.
So why particularly letters? Because they are the most all-encompassing and substantial product coming out of typewriters in the Internet era. Smacked dab right in the middle of poetry, short stories, and typewriter art at the top, and grocery lists, the "Quick brown fox...," and "Now is the time for all good men..." typing drills at the bottom—there lie the typewritten letters. Perhaps later on it would be worth showcasing other forms similar to the likes of philosophy professor Richard Polt's recent Cold Hard Type series of typewritten literature and bookstore owner Michael Gustafson's Notes from a Public Typewriter. But let's cross the bridge when we get there.
Wouldn't you like future generations to know how a small group of individuals miraculously made an obsolete machine for communication evolve way past its prime?
This is not to say no one has made conscious efforts to encourage the habit of typewriting. Polt's Typewriter Revolution enumerated a mix of advocates today: from street poets, artists, and musicians, to type-in hosts, activists, and hipsters. Still, there are around eight billion people in the world. So as part of our rather mini-uprising, I feel likewise compelled to have things put on physical records, "typecasting" the pages of thoughts for people to preserve copies of (Note to self: include doomsday preppers in the list of advocates). Wouldn't you like future generations to know how a small group of individuals miraculously made an obsolete machine for communication evolve way past its prime? Wouldn't you like them to keep the habit alive themselves? I know I would. Hey, if fountain pens could somehow reinvent calligraphy, why couldn't typewriters reinvent typewriting?
Dreaming a bit here—it would be amazing if this paves the way to legitimizing contemporary typewriter history as our experience with typewriters has been more than just some random secondhand store find or a late-night eBay add-to-cart. It is high time we unitedly typewrite. Then maybe we, as a collective, could cease to be just one line in Wikipedia's "Typewriter" entry (see: "Decline").
Admittedly, living in a fast-paced world, where AIs and algorithms are all the rage, this will be no cakewalk. I reckon the first step is finding the ideal room to pound away on those keys without interruption and castigation. The second is embracing the absence of autocorrect. The rest is what we make of it, so long as we do. To put it aptly, typewriting history is re-typewriting.∎
SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU TO THOSE WHO PARTICIPATED!
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