Where the magic happens

Sometimes I think I can't think at all unless I'm behind my typewriter.

Joan Didion

Joan Didion

There's not much that Joan Didion (1934-2021) wrote that I could have written, but those words quoted above are an exception.

I never thought I could write and certainly had no ambitions in that direction before that day in my early teens when I sat down in front of a typewriter for the first time. Suddenly, as if by magic, I could think and I could write. Words flowed out.

I no longer own a typewriter, but any keyboard (well, not a piano keyboard) will do. Usually I have no idea what I am going to say, or sometimes even what my subject will be, until I sit down at my computer to write another blog post. Once my fingers touch the keys, however, something happens. My mind focuses and words spring out.

Perhaps this is why many writers, Larry McMurtry being just one example, continued to write on a typewriter long after home computers made typewriters obsolete. Their old typewriter was where their magic happened.

Other writers find their magic elsewhere, to be sure. John Cheever wore a business suit when he wrote his stories. William Maxwell always wrote while wearing pajamas. Others have preferred to write naked or in their underwear, usually because in this condition they would be less likely to leave their writing room until they had accomplished something. Ernest Hemingway, Lewis Carroll and Virginia Woolf wrote while standing up. Mark Twain, Eudora Welty and Jessamyn West did some of their best work while lying in bed.

Perhaps this is all just a matter of habit. Or maybe it really is magic.