Pickers and Peckers

I was amazed the first time I saw a famous writer on TV typing with just the two forefingers…tipping and tapping away like a real beginner. I could not believe they could finish their book let alone be productive with such primitive typing skills. Then I saw a well known Journalist on TV showing the same technique, then I saw it again and again and it finally dawned on me that this is the secret to their success in literary endeavor.

If it was just Andy Rooney and Studds Terkel then it might be on account of eccentricity but this phenomenon includes all the great masters, Pearl S. Buck, James A. Michener and even the venerable Walter Cronkite, why I bet Shakespeare would’ve done it if he could’ve got his hands on a typewriter. At first I thought maybe it is just a few Genius that benefit from this oddity but then I started seeing it in the hi-tech world where I know that person did get a good education and keyboard skills had to be included.

I remember learning to type the proper way back in the 10^th grade and looking down on anyone who couldn’t keep up with 35 words per minute, or even find the home row. Now that very same snooty skill set seems more of a hindrance than help. No wonder I can’t get ahead; I never learned to pick and peck.

Could it be these people do know how to type with all fingers but are deliberately going with just two on purpose? Do they somehow benefit from the loss of speed that better matches the speed of their thoughts? Maybe those two fingers are directly connected to a special part of the brain that connects straight to the memory banks while the other fingers have to stand in line to send or receive data. Ten finger typing is great for secretaries and stenographers but great writers can’t be creative 10 ways at time. They need to channel down to the core of one thought rather than trying manage 10 trains of thought down 10 different tracks to the roundhouse.

In the computer world data can be sent using Serial data ( one bit at a time) or parallel ( 4, 8, 16… bits at a time) which in theory means more throughput but in the end the data still has to go back to the one bit at a time mode for processing so in some scenarios it is faster to stick with serial. And because we type so much slower than we think maybe it does make sense that we should slow down to increase quality.

So I tried to pick and peck but it wouldn’t work. I have already been programmed the wrong way and it is too late to break the mold and get anything useful in the end. So I will have to stick it out with my old fashioned methodologies, and suffer the possibility that I am too good a typist to be any good at writing.