[gregn]

Last year I had a revelation while reading Gore Vidal that all my favorite books almost without exception had been written on typewriters. I immediately went to Ebay and bought two: an Olivetti and a Olympia.

I think Mr. Hanks missed one salient point of why bothering to type on an old machine still may play a valuable role to the writer in the modern age----------Silence.

I found there is a vast difference sitting in front of any computer compared to a typewriter. Mechanical typewriters are not alive. They do not have an internal CPU constantly cycling and doing things, constantly prodding you for attention with little indicators and wifi meters and clocks and things. Computers are needy. They are constantly trying to distract you, even when they are doing absolutely nothing. Typewriters on the other hand, are doing absolutely nothing. They are merely empty mechanical contraptions with no life in them whatsoever. What you find when typing is -- well, at least what I found -- is that you are left alone with your thoughts and the workings of your mind and nothing else but the silence of the room. This might be the first time in fifteen years you have experienced this sensation. It was odd at first and slightly uncomfortable. But I found that when writing narrative fiction, the words are totally uninhibited. They are not forced. You are not churning away as if you are a member of a large electronic industrial machine: society, but instead are left in quiet solace with nothing but you and the table, the stillness of the dust floating in the air and this solid bit of metal under your palms, and they are utterly quiet, and you can think, as if for the first time. It is a miraculous sensation.

I urge anyone to try it who has been steeped in tech for the last decade or two.

[chj]

You nailed it in the best way I can think of. Owned an Olivetti as a gift, and wrote quite a lot of sheets on it. Thoughts flow more relax, very suitable for creative writing. I loved it so much that even went on to create an app to mimic the typing experience.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/write-only/id590507955?ls=1&...

Here is an interesting story regarding the app. I manually typed one of Hanks' letter (from letters of note) to serve as screenshot, and then after a few months, received a letter from Hanks' lawyer, asking me to take it down. So I took it down, thinking, how did they know. Fast forward about 1 year, then Hanks himself released one app, featuring similar typing experience. This guy really care about typewriters.

[colanderman]

Heck, I swear I used to be a more creative coder back before I got internet. No inhibitions about having written something that already exists. No pressure to keep up with the latest and greatest whatever. I really only can get back to that now when using less-popular languages whose development is complete (e.g. TLA+).

[dredmorbius]

Hrm. Is FONBF a thing? Fear of not being first?

[flashman]

The closest I get to this is turning off the wifi while I code (with little breaks to check something on Stack Overflow).