Writer's Hardware

I have always been very interested in writing software, but though I have always appreciated a good keyboard I have not always appreciated how great a good keyboard can be for the well-being of your writing. You buy a keyboard with your PC, or you get one with your Mac-laptop, and you’re stuck with it. The Mac keyboards used to be great (not so much anymore) and the keyboard I got with my old Mac stationary is still a favourite BUT now I have fallen into the rabbit hole and I can’t get up.

I’m not even sure I WANT to get up.

We are all quite dependent on the medium we write with. But what does it feel like? Do you ever wonder? I jump between my computers like a mad-hatter because one moment that one feels better but the next it’s the other. I have installed apps that sound like a typewriter when you type. I have tested a lot of different writing software, both on Mac and PC. As someone who started writing on a very, very old typewriter (that looked something like the one on the image below) it is very important to me that the equipment I am using feels right.

My father was very perceptive. At one point he gave me what I now think was a fidget-spinner, eons before fidget-spinners became thing. It was a doorbell button that gave me huge satisfaction to push, even though all that happened was a little click-sound. He soon realised that I didn’t seem to get tired of the old typewriter I found in my grandparent’s basement and that I probably liked writing, he gave me a new typewriter. That was a digital hybrid-wonder of the 80s with a small screen you might best remember from your digital wristwatch. It had a memory and drew with colours, rather than type the letters on the paper. It was a strange typewriter-almost-printer, but I enjoyed it. Then I got a heavy, industrial typewriter with keys that sounded properly when you typed and was almost impossible to carry with you to school.

Yes, we used to do that on the days we had typing lessons. It blows my mind that in today’s society, when typing is more important than ever, there is no such thing as typing lessons. How you use your hands, how you handle the keyboard is important people! Learn how to do it right!

Anyway… This is not meant to be an article where an angry woman makes fists at the world but a gentle writerly bow to good technology that makes our lives better, and so let us continue.

Then came computers and you were kind of stuck with whatever keyboard you got with it. I remember having bad ones, I remember having great ones. I remember buying new ones when the old either got too old or too irritating, but only when I felt I really needed it. One memorable one was a two folded keyboard, with keys slightly sideways for each hand. I used that thing until it was yellow with age.

Keyboards became just a thing of the computer. We have laptops and laptops come with their own keyboards and you don’t give it much thought. You’re stuck with it. My last laptop, however, (a Mac from the year when they had a massive issue with the keyboards) had a terrible keyboard that made me hate the computer and this prompted me to use an external keyboards when I could. For a long time that was the old keyboard I got with the stationary Mac I still have. Then I bought a PC for gaming and bought with it a colourful black thing with lights that does its job quite well and is enjoyable, colourful but WOW was I not aware of the luxury of creamy, clacky and\or thocky.

And so in waltzes an ASMR clip on a popular social media app.
And BAM.
I am hooked.
I started with a small one without a number-pad. It sounds so satisfying when you type and it makes you want to sit there forever, just typing away. Maybe this is what happened to Jack, maybe that’s why he wrote “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” so many times? Maybe he just really enjoyed listening to the keys striking the paper and didn’t really have another novel in him? And would it have been more or less scary if he had written “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”?

The other day I had to pull out the old PC-keyboard, the black, disco-lit one because I needed a keypad and this prompted a new WANT. I already have a creamy sounding keyboard, but this time I wanted thocky and it needed to have a number-pad.

And so yesterday it arrived. My thocky-sounding keyboard with a number-pad. I push a button (on both of these) to change it from working on the PC to have it work on my new, non-keyboard challenged, Mac laptop (bluetooth, 2.4G, USB). And I cannot tell you how much this does for my well-being when sitting in front of the computer, when working, when writing.

There is a saying in Iceland: “sæt fíla úr sjálfs rassi” (Sweet odour from ones own behind) and means that people like the smell of their own farts. I imagine the same thing can be said about the gentle sound of keyboards. Albeit delightful for the user, others may not be thrilled if they have to listen to it all day. Thankfully, I work from home, and write alone because though the sound is music to my ears, I am sure a co-worker might not appreciate having to hear it all day. I however, love this sound, would sleep with it if I could.

This is a deep rabbit hole and I have only touched the surface. I have two, cheap-ish keyboards that tickle my fancy but there is so much more. There are keyboards that sound like typewriters (I so need one of those!) and there are keyboards you build yourself, but to do that you need to know a lot more about this process than I do… so far.

For now I am happy with my setup. I have two screens. I have the stationary PC under the table. I put the laptop on the table and hook it up to one of the screens when needed, otherwise both screens are used by the PC. It is a gaming PC after all, I used it for a while to stream on Twitch (I still miss doing that!). It is growing slow and old and updating one thing at a time may be the way to go. I can see myself in the future with shelves dedicated to keyboards, starting my day by walking to the shelf to choose the keyboard I am in the mood for.

It’s a luxury but like software (which I can write about if you want me to, just say the word) it is so important. Having a keyboard you enjoy does a lot to set the mood, whether you are sitting down to work, or write.

And these keyboards draw me to the workstation, make me want to write if for nothing else than to hear the clickity-clack of the keys being struck.