I have found the writing book i've been looking for. "I'd Rather Be Writing", by Marcia Golub, from Writer's Digest Books. It talks about self-defeating behaviors, coping with a family who think they have a right to your time, and stuff like that.

This woman is me! She's saving her manual typewriter for when the comet hits, and when her parents died she found herself taking mental notes for use later. Now I just need to stop squriming when she says something that I don't want to do.

Yeah...this is true. Only kidding. I know you don't have a perfect partner, Mitch.

Holli, wow. Your last sentence brought the tears to my eyes. It seems to me that this sums it up perfectly.

...I have a manual typewriter tucked away, too.

Ah, Return of the Underwoods....

I don't...my fingers are not strong enough and I'm Typo Queen...I do miss the productive-sounding click though.

I've got an idea for a drabble theme--the first time you really appreciated music, be it rock/pop/classical/the blues, whatever.

(Yes, I'm listening to some music, and it's made me thoughtful)

I have fond memories of learning how to type on Grandpa Stanley's old gray steel Royal typewriter. I had to hold my hands at shoulder level and build up some speed or I couldn't hit the keys hard enough. Good times, good times. Then I had to learn how not to pound the crap out of today's more sensitive keyboards.

I never mastered a manual, but I tore up jack on an IBM Selectric. Come the apocalypse, it's a rock and a...harder rock for me, I guess, when the paper runs out.

Well, I know how to make quill pens, and I have beaucoodles of dip pen and extra nibs, and I know how to make ink. I'll betcha I could learn to make paper, too. Faced with the rock option, smelly papermaking seems the better way. Less toe-injury, too, from dropping documents.

I learned to type on a Royal Standard, and spent four years on my student newspaper and my first year as a reporter pounding out hundreds of stories on Royal Standards. I saw one in a thrift store a while back, and I could barely push the keys. I still have two manual typewriters around here somewhere, just in case of the end of civilization as we know it. I need to put by a supply of ribbons.

If the world ends, will somebody come take my dictation?