Statuses

A dark wooden table with a thin cardboard and taped package on it. Sitting on top of it is a pair of blue handled scissors. Nearby in the background is a lazy susan with a plate and several small decorative pumpkins on it.

An opened corrugated cardboard package with a large almost 12 inch diameter reel of typewriter ribbon wrapped in a plastic bag. The reel sits next to two tiny 2 inch diameter plastic spools and a pair of scissors for scale. Behind the reel of ribbon is a green crinkle painted 1958 Olympia SM3 with green keys. The reel appears that it is even larger in base surface area than the typewriter is.

White index card in a green Olympia SM3 typewriter spooled up with a blue and green ribbon. Typed on the card in alternating colors of blue and green are the words: Blue & Green typewriter ribbon #FTW

Typewriter ribbon unboxing! I bought a full reel of 660 yards of blue/green bichrome 1/2″ nylon typewriter ribbon from Fine Line Ribbon in Ennis, TX. It arrived yesterday, just in time for some use over the weekend. I’ve now got enough for more than 41 universal 2″ diameter (16 yard) spools, so I should be able to ribbon up my entire collection and have some left over. 

A heavily ink smudged paper towel sitting on the keyboard of a green Olympia typewriter. Spooling a full reel of ribbon was obviously a very messy business as seen by the black, red, blue, and green smudging.
Latex gloves and a good rag are necessary when spooling up from a 660 yard reel of nylon ribbon.

I know there have been some “issues” with NaNoWriMo over the past year(s), but I’ve just gotten my novel writing machine (a 1950 Royal KMG) ready to race just in time for the starting flag.

I’ve heard rumors about a mysterious Typewriter Brigade and NaNo Rhino before, so I’m wondering where it’s hiding this year?

That’s a nice looking 1960 blue Royal Safari they’ve got as the hero image on their homepage btw…

Hero image from the NaNoWriMo homepage featuring a view down onto a writing desk which has a blue 1960s Royal Safari typewriter, a coffee mug, and a red plate with a seeded bagel.

“I’m always trying to get back to the 20s a little bit.”
—John Dickerson, in Field Notes interview (2016) 

Perhaps lamenting too much technology, Dickerson says he’s got two screens on the computer in his office as well as an iPad and a phone. But he’s also got “a notebook [that] does only one thing”. He’s also got an old black lacquer Underwood standard typewriter (No. 4, 5, or 6?) on his office desk. Typewriters only do one thing too.

Wonder if he still uses it? 

Miles (1905) has some interesting things to say with respect to collecting, “business-like brevity” (aka atomic notes), annotations for thinking/arranging/marking cards, summarizing, etc.

Miles, Eustace Hamilton. How to Prepare Essays, Lectures, Articles, Books, Speeches and Letters, with Hints on Writing for the Press. London: Rivingtons, 1905. http://archive.org/details/howtoprepareessa00mileuoft.

Especially interesting: Chapter XXIV The Card-System.