When I began in journalism, writing freelance for one of my hometown newspapers – see, that tells you it was a long-ass time ago: we had two newspapers – I wrote all of my articles and movie reviews and other stuff on a portable typewriter and, later, on a Brother word processor. I hand-delivered hard copies of the articles to the newsroom.

I got to know the editors and reporters there, so after college, I got offered a full-time job. By the time I was working full time, the newspaper had a primitive word-processing system, not connected to the internet, but still better than typewriters.

I still remember when i was bringing my freelance pieces there some of the older people in the newsroom who banged away on manual typewriters. There was one old guy in particular who brought his two fingers down on the typewriter keyboard so hard it sounded like hammer falls.

I wrote a lot of pieces on my portable manual typewriter, which is still stored someplace. It was a constant companion: Because I was writing movie reviews, and my friends and I were seeing a lot of movies, I would take it along when we were all going out and write my review at a friend’s house after we got back from the theater.

It’s been decades since I’ve used a manual typewriter and would not trade my MacBook Pro for any number of typewriters. I wrote and edited books and many, many articles sitting on a folding chair or at my kitchen counter in recent years, but that was all done on the Mac laptop. It matters much less where I’m sitting and what I’m using for a desk than what I’m writing on.

I can’t imagine writing on a manual typewriter now, with all that balkiness and all the laborious corrections on paper. I know some people do it, but that’s not for me. I much prefer modern-day writing tools.

Having said that, when I ordered business cards a few years ago, I asked for an old-time typewriters motif in the background, behind my name and email address. I was ridiculously pleased with how they came out.

But I’d rather have one of those old beauties on my biz cards than have to work on one.