J. Allan Dunn: I find that my own typing keeps up fairly well with my imagination, a little behind, far enough to look over the situation ahead and amend or alter it. But then I have usually thought out my day's typing beforehand, probably several times over. The machine is less check than any other medium, but it was not until I had acquired a certain speed. If my technique bothers me I can sometimes dictate very rapidly. I find, however, that the matter of proper punctuation, dialect and unusual spelling suffers at the hand of another—this includes a dictaphone. I had a hard fight getting away from pencil to the typewriter, but I don't want to go back.
Walter A. Dyer: I write pretty rapidly, and so I seldom lose ideas. When I find my mind running ahead it is usually a warning that what I am doing is dull. If an idea jumps into my mind that I am afraid I shall forget, I sometimes stop and jot down a note of it. Usually the best stuff comes when the mind and the typewriter are well synchronized. I used to write with a lead pencil, but I have learned to use a typewriter with less effort and so with better results.
Walter Prichard Eaton: I lose ideas because I quit to play golf. When I am writing I should certainly feel sore if I couldn't hold one till I got it down. I never use a typewriter—never found one that could spell. When I use a pen I write so badly that nobody can tell whether it can spell or not. I can't dictate. I at once begin to write like Daniel Webster's Bunker Hill Oration.
E. O. Foster: I lose ideas because my imagination travels faster than my typewriter. Of the four channels—pen, pencil, typewriter and stenographer, the typewriter affords the least check to my imagination.
Arthur O. Friel: Yes. Pencil.
J. U. Giesy: At times. The typewriter serves me best.
George Gilbert: I use the typewriter, because I am skilled on it to the point where I can write two thousand four hundred words an hour. I once wrote ten thousand words at one sitting, averaging two thousand an hour. The story was not revised materially. I gained this skill transcribing one hundred million words during my long career as an Associated Press code operator, taking twelve thousand to fifteen thousand words a night for many years. I can think on the machine easily.
Kenneth Gilbert: While I do not lose ideas because of mechanical inability to set them down rapidly, I lose enthusiasm for them, and, perhaps, some of the precious fire that would make them glow stronger. I find a typewriter the least check on my imagination. I have never tried a stenographer, but I have long felt that a dictating machine would be very helpful.
Holworthy Hall: Not yet. Pencil.
Richard Matthews Hallet: My imagination does not travel at better than a snail's pace. I could do a cuneiform inscription without the sacrifice of a single idea. Sometimes I compose on a typewriter and sometimes with a pen. If you write fast on the typewriter, if you really do bring the speed dogs into play, and you are a fast thinker, you gain momentum, I should think. But I always gain momentum at the expense of nearly everything else. I do at most two thousand words a day, even on re-write stuff, and going at this pace, you can see that my imagination does not feel the lag of the writing instruments. A friend of mine leans into the horn of a dictaphone every morning and sprays vocal folly there; but I never got courage for that. That horn would follow me in dreams.