Mechanical Keyboards!
My family went camping last week, and I was going to write this newsletter about the forgotten wonder of leaving the house, and about how we saw someone camping with their enormous snorty pig, who was wearing a bright green harness and wagging its tail. It was absurd and delightful and I was too surprised to take a photo.
I also thought about telling you about the mountain roller coaster we rode, and how you could control the speed yourself, and once I realized there was no way to fly off the track, I went as fast as I could go, and it was going to be a metaphor for going all out with your writing when you feel safe to do so.
But NEVER MIND all that, because I have recently learned about mechanical keyboards, and I have a lot to say, because maybe you, like me, have been typing for a long time but didn't know that there's a better way to type.
Sometime this spring, I happened upon a wireless keyboard, and I thought, "Oh! Neat!" and started using it and hated it. It had a lag and often mistyped. I liked the wirelessness, but the typing experience was so terrible that it wasn't worth using. So I switched back to my wired keyboard, which was the one that came with my computer. I was working on retyping my manuscript (retyping = a slow but powerful way to revise a book), and noticed that my accuracy rate was terrible. I spent a lot of time fixing mistakes. I type pretty fast, and for sure I make mistakes, but it felt like I was pressing the right keys and they just weren't registering.
"Maybe I can get a better keyboard?" I thought. I didn't even know if there was such a thing.
OH BOY IS THERE EVER SUCH A THING.
So here's the deal: the keyboard that comes with your computer or laptop uses a membrane to register which keys you press. It works, technically, but is prone to error and not designed for accuracy (nor designed for fun or typing pleasure). Membrane keyboards are designed to be cheap. Mechanical keyboards, on the other hand, have individual switches under each key. Some are linear (smooth) and some are tactile (a semi-noticeable bump when you press down). Some make a click sound when you press them, and some are silent.
The upshot is, if you type a lot, using a mechanical keyboard will help you type faster and more accurately.
PLUS, they come in pretty colors! And designs!
So I read this helpful guide, and the Wirecutter recommendations, and learned about the most common switches. I ordered a switch tester (I got this 9-key tester, which was fine for me, but there are bigger ones with more switches if you really want to try out everything) to see which switch I liked best.
I had read that blue and brown switches were best for typers. Blue is noisy, brown is not. I really couldn't decide which one I liked better, but ultimately ordered this gorgeous outdoorsy keyboard with brown switches, which will be here in a few weeks.
And then I couldn't stand the old keyboard one more second, and ordered a slightly bigger mechanical keyboard with blue switches, and that keyboard came yesterday.
I can tell you how satisfying it is to type on a loud, tactile keyboard. I can tell you how I forgot I ordered one with rainbow backlighting, and how that is incredibly fun. But mostly I'll tell you that I tested my typing speed with my old keyboard on August 14, and then again after having the new mechanical keyboard for less than an hour, and my speed on the new keyboard was almost twenty words per minute faster. With far, far fewer mistyped words.
It is incredibly gratifying to know that it wasn't all in my head. To know that the old keyboard was, in fact, slowing me down. And that there is actually a solution to this problem. How often do you think there's a problem, you're able to confirm that there is in fact a problem, and then you learn that the answer to the problem can have whales on it???
This is why I threw out any writing metaphor topics I was going to write about to just straight up tell you about mechanical keyboards. Because they're amazing and I wish someone had told me about them years ago. YOU'RE WELCOME.