Why Kiwi Writers Are Switching to Typewriters in 2025
An Underwood portable typewriter at Clackers Clinic in Auckland.
Escape Writer's Block: The Typewriter Solution That Actually Works
The irony of writer's block, at least in 2025, is that a writer is confronted with an abundance of bits of what may, in isolation, be useful information in combatting the ailment but which, taken together, prove a chaotic chorus of often disharmonious advice. In olden days we had, perhaps, one book—De Copia by Erasmus of Rotterdam—which taught us a thousand ways of telling our pen pal we liked their letter, and somewhere in the back of our minds would float around the saying "if you want to be a writer, write!" which we assumed was probably said by Aristotle. And these helps, if applied, were enough to get the quill dunking itself into the inkwell.
There is, however, another problem which can be easily conflated with writer's block—the problem of improper, or too many tools. I would argue that the problem most of us have is that we have set up our writing stations in such a way that our very tools impede the process of getting words onto paper. The number of obstacles, the amount of distraction, we put between us and the act of writing borders, if closely examined, on the comical. Or the tragic. If you were to explain the modern digital setup to a writer from a hundred years ago, they might refuse to believe it.
Stop the Endless Loop of Research and Procrastination
The algorithm has conspired with advertisers to reinforce a loop which resembles the following: open up a Word document; put down a title; type "how to make a good title" into Google; scrap title for now and wait to see what the body of your text suggests; create new Word document for text body; Google "how to write a story"... and on and on in an endless string of beginnings.
Within this loop will be a shadow loop of articles and videos of looping debates about whether you should be a "plotter" or a "pantser" or—everyone's favourite—a unique combination of the two mirroring your individuality. But if you're stuck on your novel and wondering how to overcome writer's block, switching to a typewriter might just break the loop.
How Auckland Writers Are Septupling Their Output
A common report I hear from new typers is about their surprise at just how drastically their output increases when they have switched over from a digital workstation.
Creative expansion has to happen one way or another, and it tends to go wherever it's been sent. If the writer is using a typewriter or pen, then this creative life force will go directly onto the page where it can expand out into words, words, words. This is because the story juice hasn't been diluted through the complicated productivity-enhancing systems and apps and conveniences available, recommended, and insisted upon as essential for anyone wanting to boost their word count—or whatever.
Through these ingenious apps our efforts are rinsed, our plans faded, and our hopes desiccated. But at least we haven't failed—we tell ourselves—because in order to fail you have to have done something. We have, on closer inspection, done, in fact, nothing, or precious very little at the very most. Dissipation is followed by frustration, followed by despondency. This seems to be the universal end of the paradox of too many options. This is because the creative force is expended not on the writing that these many options—apps and such—claim to facilitate, but rather, on the apps themselves. But a person collecting writing apps is like a runner collecting shoes—waiting to find the perfect pair before they dare to venture out of doors.
The Mats Don't Lie (And Neither Does the Page)
A famous black belt practitioner of Jiu Jitsu once said that the importance of "the mats"—that is, the value of actually grappling with opponents on the mats in the dojo—was that the mats don't lie. They keep the student honest and free of any delusions about how far they have progressed. The true test of a martial artist is not how well they may fare against an imagined adversary or an inanimate object, such as a punching bag, but rather how long they can last—or what short work they can make of—a motivated opponent. All else is delusion.
Writers, no less than practitioners of any other discipline, can be prone to delusions of progress. All too easy is it to imagine we have made progress in a writing project after we have spent a morning doing what could only charitably be described as research. But, we tell ourselves, who are we to presume to write about something if we haven't thoroughly researched the topic? The problem, for modern writers in their modern context of infinite rabbit holes of semi-related topics, is obvious enough. One suggested article or video turns into a related video, as a morning turns into a month. Each new, and highly relevant, video brings us no closer to committing pen to paper, but we feel we have progressed because we have named ten new folders devoted to our NEW PROJECT, and in each of these folders we have typed out a few words. We tell ourselves that the accumulated text we have typed—to the power of the space between each folder—would amount to a sizeable chunk of quality potential. But how can we meaningfully gauge our progress when we operate in this kind of scattered and disjointed fashion?
This is a problem that, if you're using a typewriter, you don't need to solve. Whether you're tackling your first screenplay or submitting a short story to a New Zealand journal, drafting on a typewriter can help you stay honest. The page doesn't lie.
Break Free from the Digital Echo Chamber
The phenomenon of the echo chamber takes the onus off ourselves to improve, adapt, learn, and expand, and it places this obligation, instead, on all the information that may chance to approach us and breach our bubble from without. When a video or article comes up in our feed it genuinely is what we need, logically, to see next. Or, at least it would be if what we needed to read next was something that made us feel good about what we already believed at the point of the last video we watched.
But the progression of the suggested content in our feed is as well-curated as a diabolical mastermind could possibly make it. The algorithm pays more attention to our opinion than anybody we know could. It has godlike omniscience, even wisdom. It gets us. It seems to agree with us. We confide in it, but it sometimes knows what we're thinking before we think it, let alone type it. How do you stick a price tag on that level of intimacy?
But in spite of the obsequiousness of this all-knowing robot helper, you'll find more than a few Kiwi journalists using a typewriter to draft their work and help escape the digital echo chamber. These are the productive writers, the writers who insist on viewable, tangible outcomes, and there's nothing more concrete than a big, foldable, celebratory-smoochable page of your own typed text. This is the proof of life, the raw information, the end of all our endeavours. Tap, tap, tap, bing! Sip. Aaaah.
Why Typewriters Beat Pen and Paper for Serious Writers
The typewriter is, beside the pen and pencil, the most very basic of writing tools. It connects the writer with the writing. Why, then, not just use a pen or pencil, given they are lighter and smaller? Because with a typewriter you can write faster (and all the text is legible to all readers). With a typewriter you can make the roughest of first drafts or the most pristine of final copies. But at that point the advantages end—and beyond that point there is no need for any advantages to go.
Any advantage beyond these creates a lag. We know this—all of us do—who have experienced the tremendous, almost miraculous, whisker-short-of-ludicrous boost in our written output after we've switched to old-fashioned typewriting. Writers looking to escape this digital lag often find that a manual typewriter helps restore focus and flow. The state of Ikigai, where the worker's soul spirals up in a whirlwind of inspiration until it is no longer bounded by the laws of Time, is the normal state of rapturous focus experienced by the typer.
The Hidden Truth About Writing Apps and Productivity Tools
We don't hear much about the benefits of typewriting anymore because typewriters are no longer being made. Therefore, typewriters are not advertised on an industrial scale. Each new app, on the other hand, will be pervasively advertised. Most videos you watch about creative writing techniques will be sponsored by one app or another, or a writing course that your future depends on. But typewriters are not being sold new. They attained perfection between the 1940s and 1970s. Then the typewriting industry ran out of steam because, as far as popularity is concerned, perfection has a hard time competing with novelty—especially when this novelty combines promises of convenience with myriad novel options.
Stop Editing Before You've Even Started Writing
To add to this problem of seeming to place distractions in our own way so that we never actually get to the point of writing in the first place... when we finally do get to the molten heat of creative activity we are almost encouraged to douse it with the icy water of premature editing. This is like pruning a dicotyledon. Basting a freshly hatched bantam. It may be a truism but it is one worth repeating: you can't edit a blank page. This should extend to the idea that it isn't essential, or helpful, to edit to perfection any text shorter than a page.
It may be a perfectly normal—though perhaps, on closer thought, not entirely natural—objection that, on a typewriter, you can't edit as you go. This was one mental obstacle I was confronted with before I tried returning to typewriting as a novelty. However, this objection vanishes after a few days of using a typewriter. You begin to make fewer mistakes and this, I believe, is partly due to the fact that you stop worrying and fussing over the prospect of making a mistake.
You get used to the idea that you will be scratching through, with a pen, a lot of what you type anyway, and that this is all part of the healthy process of digestion and revision. The ability to edit text on the fly—to obliterate mistakes and blast them out of existence as though they were never made—is a novelty which we have been fooled, by familiarity, into thinking of as a necessity. A necessity it is not. You find out, almost immediately, that you simply do not need to chop and change everything as you go. Writing on a typewriter forces you to keep moving forward—no backspace deleting, no distractions, just momentum.
How a Typewriter Breaks the Endless Cycle
On a typewriter, the blank page will not suffer being blank for long. It stares at you in judgment—but in the most encouraging way. Encouraging, how? Whereas the modern digital setup tells you "you have writer's block but that's okay because you shouldn't even be thinking about writing before you have read this article," the blank page in a typewriter is not fooled. It ignores your claims of writer's block and tells you: "Press the keys until the bell goes bing. Now."
When you're staring at yet another blank Google Doc, remember that a typewriter offers you another kind of blank page—one that demands commitment. If, on a typewriter, you feel the urge to look something up, to reference a crucial fact, then you will find the effort to extricate yourself from its loving embrace (especially if you are set up with a big manual machine), stand up, walk over to your Encyclopaedia Britannica (or whatever you have on your shelf), is probably more of an effort than it could possibly be worth. You will quickly get used to making small, bespoke marks in the marginalia of your typed page for future clarification, epexegesis, or amplification.
Join the Growing Kiwi Typewriter Movement
Looking to build a consistent writing habit in 2025? Some authors in Auckland, and throughout New Zealand, are going analogue—setting aside an hour a day at the typewriter. These writers are part of a small but growing worldwide underground movement known, to its members, as the Typosphere.
What Will You Need?
Firstly, you will need to find a typewriter. You can find them reasonably cheap, and there is a convenient New Zealand typewriter buying guide here.
You will also need a ream of standard A4 printer paper. Nothing fancy.
Then you will need an ink ribbon. Here you can learn about typewriter ribbons available in New Zealand.
I would also recommend some kind of filing system—such as folders, boxes, or binders—so you can organize the pages upon pages upon pages you will be typing over the next few months into infinity.
There are some more online resources at your disposal which can be found at the bottom of our New Zealand typewriter website here.