Underwood No. 5 in the REH Museum

You might think the new Conan movie inspired this article. Alas, you would be wrong. Its source is my immense appreciation of Robert E. Howard’s work and my love affair with vintage manual typewriters.

To understand the blood and thunder style of REH, indeed all our classics of swords, sorceries and heroics, I think you need an appreciation of the manual typewriter’s effect on the craft of fiction.

There’s this great scene in The Whole Wide World where Robert E. Howard pounds away on his typewriter, dictating to himself with the passion of the possessed. That machine, which Howard purchased in 1928 and used till the very end, was the classic Underwood No. 5.

For decades, when most people thought “typewriter” this 30 lb. desktop machine was what they had in mind. Millions were produced between 1901 and 1932, so even today the Underwood No. 5 isn’t a rare find, nor particularly valuable unless in mint condition. When Howard bought one of these machines, he knew he was getting a reliable companion for his career. Think about the investment value. Many of these machines still work now. Think your Dell Inspiron or Macbook will be workable in 80 years? Me neither.

You can get a No. 5 on eBay for $50 or less, non-restored. (For restoration you’d need a typewriter repair place, which is becoming increasingly rare.) You’ll pay almost as much for the machine as for shipping. Sadly, I don’t have one myself. Yet. I own ten typewriters already and my wife scowls when I mention a new one… I do have an L.C. Smith from the mid-30’s and a Royal Portable from 1929 (mint condition and ever so precise), so I can well attest to the action and experience of these old machines.

Many of you have likely never used a manual typewriter before. Perhaps an electric, perhaps none at all. (I touched my first computer in 1983, resented the electric typewriters we learned to type on in school, and didn’t experience the true pleasure of the manual typewriter until early 2010.) If your experience is limited to electric machines, then you only know half the story. It’s just not the same.

There’s an almost primal experience to using a manual, like a sculptor chiseling or a carpenter hammering. The striking of the keys, the smell of oil and metal, the gunfire staccato of striking keys (the sharp feedback as they rebound), the bell ring warning the end of the line approaches, the scraping return of the carriage, the scroll of paper. It is a thing of art and beauty.

As for the effect on writing… Take a look at some books from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. Notice something? They got bigger with each decade, huh? There was a marketing dynamic, sure. But computers allowed writers to match the dynamic. Allowed us all to easily become messy and long-winded.

REH Bedroom with Desk and Typewriter

You don’t often see writing with the fast-paced, blazing action you find in old pulps. Some of that is style, but when you type on a manual machine the very writing of the story has an immediate physicality to it, not unlike the fast-paced action in REH’s work. There is sound and action.

I notice the sounds more in older books. The brevity of the words. The rush of the action. Computers, gods know I love them, simply don’t have this kind of soul. And writing with them, I think, becomes more cerebral and less a physical act of creation. And it shows. Our books today tend towards lengthy description and introspection far more than the thundering heroic fantasy pounded out on the old manuals.

When you write something on a typewriter, you have to mean it. Remember, if you mess up or change your mind, that’s the whole page to retype. There’s no time for rambling and dithering along through a story. You get to the point. You say what you mean. And you say it right the first time. And, I think the nature of the machine itself changes how you write. For bold pulp action, I think it changes it for the better.

Note: I have thus far written one novel on a manual typewriter, a 1955 Hermes Rocket. I plan on composing all my future works on various typewriters. Naturally they will get scanned in and edited on the computer. There are advantages to our modern world.

This article originally appeared on Rogue Blade’s Home of Heroics.

The power went out here after a storm yesterday afternoon. A small storm. We live deep in the woods. Lots of places where a tree could strike the lines along the way. We were supposed to have power back on at 6 pm. Didn’t happen until 12:30 am. Grumble.

Naturally, the battery went out on my Macbook, delaying completion of the ebook I was working on. (I unplugged the Macbook during the storm.) And I hadn’t charged my iPod Touch in a few days, so I couldn’t read any books or write on it.

The solution?

Why pull out a typewriter, of course. Specifically, my gold-speckled Olympia SF from the 1950’s (?). Lap-sized with the sweet action you’d expect from an Olympia. And of the ten typewriters I own, it has my favorite font. (I’m a 12 characters per inch kinda guy.)

The rub, of course, is that I’m not working on composing anything new at the moment. I have two novels in first draft state that I’m working on revising. I’m generating two ebooks. I have new things planned, but I don’t want to start them until I take care of the aforementioned projects.

I could have read by my bright LED Coleman lantern. (A Hunger Games reread is next up.) But I wasn’t in a reading mood. I wanted to work damn it.

So I started a new story: THE BONES OF KAZARDAHL. Novel, short story, novelette, novella? I don’t know really. Though I’d wage money on novella. It’s adventure fantasy. Not too serious or grim, though that might change. I have barely an inkling of where it will go. Just the notion of a few characters. Should be fun.

How it starts:

With fire and sword and a thirst for something, anything but the relentless cold and howling winds of the North Mark, the reavers descended on the sleeping town of Kazardahl. Sleeping save for one man who had retired there. One man, but not just any man. Once he had been the greatest wizard in the Kingdom of Bregh. And awake this late at night he was because retired or not, it is not the habit of a wizards to sleep at night.

If you are going to offer authors copyediting or other publishing services, please don’t quote prices in terms of pages.

I have no idea what the page-length is for any of my novels. I’m certain I don’t care. I’m certain that if I knew it would tell me nothing of value. Yes, if I format the work for a standard submission, I will know how many pages there are, if I bother to look at the total. (Never have before.) Assuming everyone uses the same beautiful Courier font and margins, though…

But if I’m looking to produce an ebook myself, I’m never going to use standard submission formatting. Why would I?

And if you quote your by-page services along with specific formatting requirements, that would work. However, the message it sends to me is that you’re stuck in the past.

Pages are variable in the 21st century. Stick to word counts.

(Yes, I could tell you how many pages are in any of my new short story drafts because I do those on manual typewriters. However, those are only rough drafts, not even close to finished works. Plus, the pitch sizes and line spaces are very different on the ’29 Royal Portable, the ’56 Olympia SM-3, and the ’55 Hermes Rocket. So that doesn’t tell you much, either. And really, this bit here is beside the point. I just wanted to talk about typewriters.)

This is a vintage 1929 Royal Portable typewriter. Over the last week, I’ve purchased six vintage, manual typewriters. “Why the freck would you do that?” you might ask.

Well, I’m a writer, and these are writing devices. Very cool, vintage writing devices.

Also, I’m strange. And obsessive.

I’ve many other reasons. In fact, I will soon detail those reasons on this very site. I am going to write a story (novel?) using one or more manual typewriters. I plan on explaining why and doing a series of articles detailing the experience. (I’ve never used a manual typewriter before. Only an electric for typing class in high school. I got my first computer in 1984 at the age of 8.)