Take the poll

I plan to add a random poll to the site now and again. First question: how many typewriters do you own?

<-- Select your number of typewriters here

I've posted several times (too lazy to add links) about my struggles with keeping my collection to the target number of three or fewer. I am holding steady at five, and what I want to know is, where the heck do you keep yours? I keep one in my office at work, two on shelves in the living room, one on my desk upstairs, and one in its case, tucked behind a chair. Impractical. As someone who aims to use the darned things, and not just leave them sitting around, in addition to having severely limited personal space, five is just over the top, unless I plan a Mr. Typewriter-style makeover of the garage.

On this note, anyone on the lookout for an Underwood 319?

Stay tuned for a future poll... I already have a topic in mind.

Not just for typing anymore

We are all aware of keycutters and the growing market for typewriter key jewelry out there, but jewelers aren't the only ones eviscerating typewriters for fun and profit.

Jeremy Mayer is an artist who creates crazy-ass robot sculptures and more robot sculptures from typewriter parts.

While I am not entirely without a sense of humor or artistic appreciation, there is something a little melancholy about the concept of taking this machine, the engine of the written word in the 20th century, and dissembling it into ironic art-world curiosities and charm bracelets.

Jeremy Mayer's exhibition is at the Nevada Museum of Art until early December; hurry if you want to show up with your typewriter in protest. :-)

Typecast: On not writing fiction

Stay tuned...

This weekend, I have some overdue typecasts coming up. The last two weeks have really gotten to me (and I'm not even typing a novel, like some of you out there...)

Incidentally, how is that going? I am guessing there has to be some sort of hand or finger fatigue at this point in the game, due to the extra force required when using a typewriter. I always used to get incredible hand and wrist pains after nano, but this was from lying on the couch and typing with a laptop on my stomach. Not good.

You have an e-mail message from Strikethru

It's time for another typecast

...Except that I am behind on my typing. Wasting too much time looking around on Etsy for Christmas gifts and cool typewriter junk (if only I was the big ol' belt buckle type...)

By way of a total tangent, I continue to enjoy the spontaneous misty-eyed "all about my college typewriter" stories that people in my office tell me whenever they spot the Underwood 319 sitting in the piles of paperwork and flotsam on my desk at Nameless Software Corporation. I think typewriters need to get out there in the public eye a little more often. You there! Bring yours out to a cafe or something.

Back to the subject at hand, which is also a tangent. I'm kind of struggling with a pair of blogs right now... what do to? I've been writing tiny-dog.com since 2000, a personal ramble-style blog that fell into disrepair around the time that I decided to embark on this whole Strikethru experiment in topical blogging. And yet, how long can you type about typewriters? It's too meta! Which is not to say I plan on stopping posts about typewriters and other machines (got to get that box camera fired up, dammit) but rather, is there a place for personal rambles on Strikethru? Is it time to evolve/devolve/merge/what have you?

Color me confused.

Hope the Nanowrimo typewriter brigade is getting its second wind about now...

Typewriter review: 1961 Royal McBee Signet

The print ad for the Royal Signet
Refurbishing the Signet

Gifts for the typewriter enthusiast

Note: all of the links below are certainly now DOA, but any Etsy.com search with "typewriter MINUS key" will return some good results.

As corporate America has surely reminded you, Halloween just ended, so Christmas is here. I was looking around Etsy today for handmade typewriter-themed gifts, and while most of them revolve around the controversial act of keytop cutting, there are several that don't, and would be safe to consider for the type-ophile in your life (although odds are great that you are the only one you know). It seems no typewriter was harmed in the making of the following handcrafted and reasonably-priced typewriter-themed gifts:

Very cool vintage office magnets
Typewriter covered blank book/journal and another one
Typewriter scrapbook page kit
Stationary: notes from a mad typist
Typewriter necklace
Wooden pendant (I'd like this, personally)
Artwork and more artwork and even more artwork
Royal Laptop bag
Typewriter button
Underwood coffee mug

Oh, there's more, have a look around.

Nano victories of old

Well, day one of Nanowrimo found me praying to the porcelain god for seven straight hours after contracting some sort of stomach bug, so my bid to get anywhere with Nano this year is already off to an inauspicious start.

Let us revisit the days when Nanowrimo was coming along a little more successfully for me, by way of a Wayback Machine link to my still existent, but ailing, seven year old Web site, tiny-dog.com. Granted, I did not make it to the finish line via typewriter in those unenlightened days, but still.

Best of luck to those of you out there type(writing) away.

What's your typewritten novel about?

Well, not to talk Nanowrimo to death, especially being one who has no intention of reaching word count this year, but I sure the heck hope you have your typewriters firing on all cylinders as of today if you ever hope to cross the finish line, because as you probably know, super annoying Nano participants who apparently lack outside commitments of any kind have already racked up 3,000 words in the amount of time it took you to read this blog post.

I own five typewriters: an Underwood 319, looking to be of 60's-70's vintage that I keep on my desk at work, a '61 Royal Signet (a Freecycle find, as was the Underwood), a '41 Royal Quiet De Luxe (antique store), a '67 Olympia SM-9 (bought from a reseller), and a 70-something Olympia Traveller De Luxe (eBay). Whatever feeble stabs I take at Nano this year will be restricted to the latter two typewriters because the SM-9 is properly reconditioned and in good working order, and the OTDL is travel sized. To make Nano truly do-able entirely by typewriter, I'd say everyone should have a travelling typewriter to allow portable authoring on location. If you don't yet have one, proceed immediately to eBay.

What is your typewritten Nano novel going to be about this year? In theory, mine will be an attempt at a post-apocalyptic genre piece.