Recently i've been thinking about writing in general and the distractions of the modern connected everything. Having just brought a manual portable typewriter in perfect condtion for £5 from a charity shop and a £2 ribbon from eBay, I now have a proper retro setup that can goe on camp or anywhere else that i want to be writing off grid.
Evernote has the OCR scanning caperbility, so I hope that pages of typed text will be scannable! A typewritier also is perfect for portable lists and filofax pages. Why bother,i have tavlets, laptops and other portsble devices, sometimes though, I really think distraction free writing can yield the best results.
I also enjoy writing with a fountain pen, however if your writing isn't that neat then a type writer or dedicated word processor can be the minimalise key. Also it can bring a ritual and special feeling to your writing.
You can get a wide range of wordprocessors on eBay, the Amstrad NC100/NC200, which run Protext. The 200 had a floppy drive. The excellent Sharp Font Writer series again these have a floppy drive and the ability to export RTF or ASCII format. The additin of a £10 usb floppy drive and your mac can now read rhese files. Floppy disks also are still a good storage format
To support hte ritual of writing. A local wiki like vudoo pad can run on ipad and macbook etc.
In summary, using a dedicated typewriter can focus the mind, to allow uninterupted thinking and writing. It is possible to use this vintage kit and to get information from the old device to the new. Procrastination and writers block is a real problem sometimes. Getting into flow, which is what we all aim for is possible, using some very cheap vintage kit.
