Why I plan to buy a typewriter

 There is something to be said about analogue technology - it works!
 There's no denying modern, digital technology makes our lives faster and more efficient but does it make us more effective? When it breaks or, as was the case yesterday, needs power and there is none, we're left stranded, frustrated and "powerless".
 Where I live, mostly as a result of maladministration, rampant government corruption and long-term lack of maintenance, the government-owned power utility often can't supply enough electricity to power the country and nation-wide rolling-blackouts bring larges swathes of the country to a standstill. This was the case  yesterday.
 Work plans were instantly out of the window and I was immensely frustrated.
 There was once a less stressful time when I did all my writing on a portable, manual typewriter. On it I knocked out articles, speeches and books and never worried  about power-cuts. There was something pure, simple and tactile watching thoughts turn into 'concrete' reality on a sheet of paper, one letter, one clack and one keystroke at a time.

Sculptor

 It was the nearest thing I could imagine to being a sculptor, chipping away at a lifeless hunk of granite, giving it form and life, one chisel-strike at a time. An act of creation, I find impossible to reproduce on a computer screen.
 These are the reasons I've decided to buy typewriter and, it appears, I'm in good company. There are many prominent writers and authors who remain firmly "old-school", including P.J. O'Rourke, Danielle Steel and Tom Wolfe. As was Hunter S. Thompson who occasionally took out his frustrations on his IBM Selectric by flinging it into the snow and shooting at it. In the end the machine outlived him, as he committed suicide by shooting himself.
 Actor, Tom Hanks obsessively collects typewriters and has hundreds in his collection. His passion has now resulted in an app for iPads called "Hanx Writer" that allows users, nostalgic for the "clickety-click" and "ding" of typewriters, to type and print documents just like on an old, manual typewriter.
 There is also a surprising number of modern writers who remain even more traditional and work in longhand with a pen or pencil - J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Quentin Tarantino, Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Tan, Jhumpa Lahiri and George Clooney are good examples.
 "I've gone back to using a typewriter for the first draft because it forces me to think," said author, Will Self, in a recent magazine interview. "It brings order back into my mind."

More productive?

 Will I be more productive and effective in the long term? I think so. There are no distractions. No Internet connection open in the background. No "let me quickly check what's going on on Facebook". And most significantly, no "cut and paste" or quick and easy deletion and correction that interrupts the flow and process of getting thoughts captured. Producing a first draft will be quicker.
 That draft will be edited and corrected, in pencil, then entered into the computer, resulting in a second editing during the inputting process. Another read-through and final edit of the document on screen and a better, finished product.
 It's a much more structured and formal examination-process.
 Typewriters are still made in the US and supplied to prison inmates who are prohibited access to computers and the Internet. And while the machines may have been confined to history in many countries, in those where electricity supply is erratic, they remain vital.
 In Mumbai, India's most populous city, the "clack...clack...clack" of typewriters rings loud as professional typists on the pavements outside courthouses type legal documents for clients.
 Many of the world's greatest works were written with a pen or on a typewriter - so also may the next great South African novel!

 Anyone still write with a pen or typewriter?