Replacing habits & (type)writing

I was reading blogs on quitting smoking and other bad habits and I found a post on Zen Habits that really got me thinking. It said if you are going to quit something you need to first recognize your triggers and design some positive activity that can take up that time and maybe even be a little similar to the bad habit. This is great advice, so I started to think about what I could do that is similar to going outside for a smoke and I actually came up with something that should hold my interest for at least the month that is takes a human to break a habit.

Little background here — as I have said before writing is my passion, and my favorite writing tool is the typewriter. I have almost ten of them lying around and I really only use three of them. That’s not to say I’m looking to get rid of some of them though, and the fact is a couple I have are in ill repair, one is unusable. Now, being into sixty year old machines and using them daily, I have gathered the tools to work on them.

So, after my “quit date” (more on that in a minute), when the urge to smoke gets strong, I’ll head to the basement and work on my Remington typewriters. One came off a forgotten merchant marines ship and has been all over the world. It’s rusty and very dirty but the history of the machine is neat and it has the potential to be great, but as it stands I can’t even feed it a piece of paper. The other is just like my first typewriter.

Twenty years ago, when it became apparent that writing was my thing, my sister bought me this WWII era Remington typewriter. It was in perfect shape when I got it and I wrote hundreds, maybe thousands of pages on it. Well, I lost it in a move and the last building where I knew where it was got razed and made into a parking lot few years back, so I am relatively sure it’s in a landfill right now.

After a steady year of looking for another one, I finally found one. It’s working but in pretty rough shape, so I am going to restore it and use the other Remington for parts. I think this will be a great way to take up my then former smoking time and it will end with me having a great typewriter, one that I started on and have always loved.

Now, about my “quit date,” Bridge Street Clinic has offered to help me with quitting smoking. I have an appointment Thursday with a patient educator to talk about smoking cessation and eating healthy on a budget. My goal is to figure out the best way for me to quit and then finally do it. I will of course write about what I learn at the visit, so stay tuned fair reader.

So why typewriters? No particular reason other than I love them. The only obvious benefit is that I am forced to rewrite every first draft to have a usable copy. This is a step computers have stolen from writers because all of a sudden, you can just edit the christ out of your draft until it’s good enough to send off for sale. This makes bad writing easier and good writing harder.

The blog is written only on the computer, my personal writing — columns, short stories and screenplays mostly — is written on the typewriter. So is my journal. Another hidden benefit of the typewriter is I can type out everything that’s pissing me off and get out all of my blinding hate and then take the paper outside and burn it. That’s a very freeing experience. So it boils down to personal preference. I had this friend who writes with pen and paper his every first draft and then he would transcribe his work to the computer. He would always tell me I am the dumbest person on Earth (see why he’s not my friend anymore?) because I use a typewriter. He said it was a waste of time to type out a copy that I have to rewrite on the computer. I said there is no difference between writing with a pen and writing with a typewriter. He again would tell me I’m stupid because with a pen you can feel the process more.

Now come on, he’s missed his own point completely. The feeling he talks about is the love of the craft, and it feels different to everyone, and it’s what you chase as an artist. With the typewriter, you hammer words to the page and end up with a perfect looking draft — no scrawl to interpret, just misspellings. That is the proper way for me to write and I recommend it to others I know. It’s what works for me. It’s how I began, and it’s my current favorite technique.

So enough of that. In other news, I made some changes to my bank account I’ll go into that in a later post. I think 882 words is good enough for now.

I’ll leave you with a picture of my current writing “axe.” Her name is Peggy.