Whenever I think about my favorite writers, I image them hunched over manuscripts, their brains filled with plots, characters, and climaxes, as words, words, words flow smoothly from the tips of their fingers to the tips of their pens.

John Steinbeck did much of his writing on a yellow lined notepad with a pencil and eraser; Charlotte Brontë wrote with a pencil in cramped, tiny handwriting on loose scraps of paper; and Charles Dickens wrote with a “continuous provision” of ink and quill pens.

But when I look back at my own early works, I have absolutely no memory of how they came about. Manuscripts in my files indicate that I wrote my first drafts with a pencil or pen and then typed them on plain white paper using a typewriter – but it must have been a typewriter that I didn’t own.

I decided that I wanted to be a writer when I was 17 years old. Way back then, I idolized all writers, and I loved to read about them on the jacket flaps of their books. What exciting lives they led!

O. Henry had been a draftsman, a bank teller, a cowboy, and an ex-con. Zane Grey was a baseball player, a world traveler, and fisherman. Ernest K. Gann worked as a fighter pilot, a film producer, a barnstormer, a rancher, and a sailor. Mary Higgins Clark was a stewardess, a copy editor, and a writer of radio scripts.

Me, though? I started out as probably the worst stenographer in the history of the scribbled word. But I typed, too. And at that, I excelled. I was the fastest typist in the world.

My first experiences of typewriters were the clunky gray monster machines at my secretarial school. On those, I plunked “Dear Mr. Smith. We are in receipt of your order…” over and over until my brain was numbed with boredom and my fingers were just plain numb. Although I did not leave secretarial school with a diploma – a failing I repeated often at colleges over the years – I had learned a trade.

My first job was as typist for a book club; my next as typist for a famous novelist. After that, I became typist for a biology professor, a motorcycle dealership, a movie producer, a management consultant, a graphic arts company, an advertising agency, and a public relations firm.

I did not own my very own typewriter, however, until a friend’s father, who’d heard about my ambition to write, had a mysterious box delivered to the door of my tenement apartment on East 90th Street. It was a brand new, never before operated, IBM Selectric I. It weighed 30 pounds, came with two shiny silver golf ball-sized typing elements (gothic and script), and was – delight piled upon delight – Bright Red.

The first time in my life that I ever really, truly fell in love was with that IBM Selectric.

Men sometimes speak of their first cars the way I felt about that machine. It was strong. It was virile. It never broke. It never faltered. It never failed me. It was and remains to this day, the Pierce Arrow … the Rolls Royce … the Duesenberg of all typing machines, and it was on that IBM Selectric that I evolved from a girl who wanted to become a writer to a woman who clutched in her hand a check from her literary agent in payment for the rights to her first novel.

By the time my next two books came along, I was in agony. The world had moved away, not only from my dream machine, but from all typewriters, including the IBM Wheel Writer word processing typewriter that I bought to keep up with the times. Even that, however, did not satisfy the needs of my publisher’s technical staff.

And so, kicking and screaming all the way, I made the switch. I typed my last nine… ten … eleven novels onto a computer, making editorial changes directly on the monitor, and eventually sending them as attachments to my editors with the click of a key … wherever they may have been.

However…

I do not – let me look this up in my Thesaurus – “compose, conceive, construct, or concoct” any works of fact or fiction on my computer. No. Not one. Type and edit? Yes. Create? Nope.

But … back in the days of my IBM Selectric typewriter? Aah, yes. That beloved machine responded joyfully to the ebb and flow of my every idea. The touch of its keys was perfection. Each letter leaped directly from my brain to the page, eager to form the next word. If it had been a dog, it would have been Lassie. A horse, Trigger. A mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. It existed solely to serve me.

It had a soul.

Computers? I defy anyone to develop a spiritual kinship with one of those ever-evolving, infinitely replaceable (about 41 million of them are thrown away each year) cookie-cutter devices.

And so, today – like my literary heroes, John Steinbeck, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens – I write my original manuscripts by hand; my thoughts travel from my brain, down my arm, through my fingertips to my pencil or pen.

My first preference would have been my old bright red IBM Selectric (where are you and who owns you now?) But if I can’t have what I want, the old-fashioned way will have to do.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2025. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com.