The clatter of a typewriter does not disturb my train of thought. I don't need a sound-proof cell when I write. When I feel in the mood for writing my spine is stiff and I sit straight in my chair and punch hard. I like to feel the keys bounce back from the platen. It makes me feel as if I'm punching something and getting somewhere.
Katharine Holland Brown: Yes. Either the typewriter or a pen. Never a stenographer.
F. R. Buckley: Never lost an idea that way yet. I write extremely fast, and without conscious effort, on the typewriter—up to ninety words a minute. I used to write in pencil and pen when on English newspapers; now I'm used to the typewriter, I find it and the hand-methods' check equal. I mean, typewriter used to check me, now hand-writing does. Just what you're used to. Typewriter for me.
Prosper Buranelli: It seems to me that a writer is a person with the gift of gab, but whose gift of gab is slower than the jawbone. Slow typewriting is about the speed of my gabble.
Thompson Burtis: Yes. I have never used any other means of writing than a typewriter. I do not believe that I would be effective through a stenographer, and I'm damn certain that I'd never write a line unless I was starving if I had to depend on pen or pencil.
George M. A. Cain: I do lose ideas before I can catch up to them with the recording. I have never done any writing for publication otherwise than directly upon the typewriter. Any handwriting entirely confuses me. I can use a typewriter blindfolded. I can write with it twice or three times as fast as with the pen or pencil. Without having tried it, I imagine that the presence of a stenographer would greatly bother me at first. I have always thought that I might possibly get better results by using a dictaphone and then cutting out about two-thirds of what I said to it. Heaven knows I am prolix enough on a typewriter. I hesitate to credit heaven with any generally distributed knowledge of what I would do, if it involved no greater effort than talking.
Robert V. Carr: When manufacturing literary sausage I naturally want to grind it out rapidly. But if I am working on what seems to be a good story, I can get my ideas down with a pencil.
George L. Catton: Lots of ideas are lost that way, though they generally come back. Pencil, with me, affords the least check on loss.
Robert W. Chambers: Do not lose ideas thus. Pencil and eraser.
Roy P. Churchill: I believe the mind can be trained to construct with the means at hand. I have seldom lost any real valuable ideas by having the spirit run away with the physical construction of some sort of record. At first I wrote with pencil, which is slow, then on a machine, which is faster, and now dictate to a rapid stenographer. I have had to get the habit of each method, and time would be lost if I had to change again.