Can you turn a typewriter into a word processor?

A long time ago in a technological environment far, far away, an article in Writer’s Digest proposed a way to keep up the flow of writing that is repeatedly interrupted by the necessity of putting another sheet of paper in the typewriter once every 250 words or so.

The advice was to use a long continuous roll of suitably wide paper, obtained perhaps from factory overstock. The roll, perhaps 8 and 1/2 inches by 50 feet in dimension, would gradually be used up as you typed away, but not so fast as an 8 and 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper would be used up.

Of course, you were supposed to try this with first drafts only, not final copy. Until electronic submissions became commonplace, editors still always wanted manuscripts to be submitted in sheets. Market listings never included a request that manuscripts be submitted in the form of tubby industrial paper rolls. But the point was that by obviating the need to replace pages as you went along, you’d enhance the creative flow that was most important when you were first coming up with the words, not quite so important when pruning and polishing them.

The piece appeared probably in the late 70s. Has the advent of word processing killed the utility of this notion? Maybe. But there is something to said for handwriting or typing as an alternative to electron juggling, to relieve sameness or to ward off the demon of obsessive-compulsive blue-penciling. It’s easy to edit as one goes along on the computer; and hard, at least for some writers, to train oneself just to let the words flow happily or crappily and amend and repair later. So maybe I’ll try to scrounge up one of these paper rolls and see how it goes, now that I’ve hauled out the electronic typewriter.

Tags: editing, typewriter, word processing, writing