The Olympia came from a flea market in Feira da Ladra for thirty euros and a long negotiation. It is mint green, weighs as much as a small dog and sticks, faithfully, on the letter e.
Drafting without undo
On a typewriter you cannot fiddle. You commit to a sentence or you start a new page. At first that felt terrifying. Within a week it felt like freedom.
Without a delete key, every sentence has to earn the paper it is printed on.
The second draft
The real lesson came later, at the editing stage. Because retyping is laborious, I only retyped what deserved to survive. My second drafts became shorter, sharper and strangely more confident.
You do not need a typewriter to borrow the lesson. Try editing on paper, then retyping by hand into a blank document. Notice what you cannot be bothered to copy. That is usually the part to cut.
