So, you bought a typewriter. Why? Truthfully, you might not even know yourself. In an age when we are surrounded by smooth-surfaced, shiny technology, there is something appealing about something so unapologetically mechanical, all moving parts and clunking sounds. Yours might be visually appealing, beautifully designed or in a favourite colour, or represent an era that has always fascinated you. It may be nostalgia for a favourite uncle who was a writer, for afternoons after school in your mother's office playing with the date stamp, for a time before you were alive and a cherished author bashed away at an old Underwood in a cloud of cigar smoke. Why not? I say, if you found one you liked, at a price you could afford and you got it before that other guy, then it was meant to be.
Now that it's home, and assuming you didn't just want it as set dressing, you've typed a few lines on it. Maybe even found an index card to try, typed a note to the cat to your husband and composed a tweet about a fast fox and an indolent dog. What now?
1 >
Type your blog posts like this guy. Stylistically, it's very cool, but I promise not to even try. I've been posting rarely enough without that added challenge.
2 >
Add captions to your instant photos. It is a bit fiddly as you have to move the photo or the letter spacing messes up (as you can see in my, ahem, artistic spacing).
3 >
Wedding invitations like these, seriously, it's the "dress up! xo." That hooked me
4 >
Type thoughts, poems, and quotes for your journal. And if you use tissue or deli paper you can layer it too.
5 >
Type a love letter. Send it (I dare you!). Don't send it; cut it into confetti and let the wind catch it and carry it off. Cut it into hearts to give away or to keep close in your journal.
Two cool things I found out since posting this:
Julie Kirk over at Notes on Paper did a brilliant typewriter post last week (and hers is way funnier than mine, by the way).
And Monday was International Typewriter Day. Who knew that was a thing!?
