It seems even the most devout techno-utopiasts carry around a Moleskine notebook. They appreciate the way writing longhand on paper alters their thought processes. Yet the same people think writing on a typewriter is absurd, performative, pretentious, or a deliberate troll. Over the past year, I’ve grown to love writing on a typewriter. I didn’t write my first three books on a typewriter, but I am my next one. I use my typewriter to write articles (yes, this one), email newsletters, and even tweets. I think you should try it. Write on a typewriter. The typewriter is the best writing tool ever If you’ve followed my work a while, you’ve seen me experiment with progressively more-primitive writing tools. I first used an AlphaSmart – a portable word-processor – seven years ago. Readers of my latest book, Mind Management, Not Time Management will recognize the typewriter as another “grippy” tool. It helps you get a grip on your thoughts, without letting them slip. But, I think the typewriter is the end of this road. I won’t be making cuneiform impressions on clay any time soon, and I won’t even bother experimenting with a chisel and stone tablet. As the musician John Mayer – who writes his lyrics on a typewriter – has said, “I’m not picking the typewriter because I think it’s hip. It’s the best version of the idea that’s ever come around.” Or, as I say, there is no more pure writing device than a typewriter. Before you dismiss that statement, think about it carefully. Notice I said “writing,” not “editing,” nor “publishing.” Computers are great for publishing A computer is the greatest publishing device ever. I have a computer to thank for my career as an author. It not only helps me lay out the interiors of my books and design my covers, but without my computer, I couldn’t then publish my books to a market of hundreds of millions of readers around the globe. None of it could be done without my computer. And since my computer is also what I use to crowdsource editing from my readers and prepare manuscripts, the computer is not only the best publishing device, it’s the best editing device. Typewriters are great for writing Write, edit, publish: Those are the steps you must repeat to be a writer, and they have to be done in order. You can take a step backward, but you can’t skip a step forward. No device does the first step better than a typewriter. It’s for writing, not research Some will protest that you can’t look things up on a typewriter. Well, that’s “research,” and it can be done before writing, or after writing, while editing. Research, however, is not writing. Only writing is writing. Your first draft doesn’t belong on the cloud Some will point out that when you write on a typewriter, your work isn’t stored on a hard drive or backed up to the cloud. It’s too easy to lose sheets of paper. These people fundamentally misunderstand the writing process. As Ernest Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” The typewriter is where you say everything you might want to say and explore how to say it. While it shows up on a page, the real work takes place in your mind – daydreamt in your own personal cloud. As you write, you print Not that your first draft isn’t handy to have. This makes the typewriter the better writing device than its cousin, the AlphaSmart. The AlphaSmart has a tiny screen, which is a good forcing-function to keep your fingers moving. But once the writing is done, you mostly have to rely on what new connections you’ve made in your mind. As you write on a typewriter, you also print. When you’re done, you have a page you can pick up and mark on while you pace around or read parts aloud. By the way, if you’re thinking that piece of paper is bad for the environment, consider that one hour of computer use is worth about seven sheets of paper. We all have scrap paper lying around with a bare side we can type on. You can save that from a landfill – and a typewriter, too! When you write longhand on paper, you a