Author: Richard Holliday

I type all of the first drafts of my books these days on a keyboard made on 27^th March 1992. Nightmare Tenant, Foundations, Price War… they all share that common lineage.

I know this because the keyboard includes a “birth certificate” on its rear that states its provenance. This piece of hardware is over thirty years old.

Above is a photograph of my keyboard. It may look unremarkable and plain. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. This keyboard is an IBM Enhanced keyboard better known by its designation: Model M. These keyboards are legendary for their extremely high build quality, and the quality of the feel their buckling-spring keys produce.

To give you a very potted history, these keyboards were originally manufactured by IBM from 1985, from around 1991 were manufactured by Lexmark when IBM decided to get out of the keyboard business, and from 1996 an independent company called Unicomp bought the rights, patents and tooling from Lexmark when they also decided to get out of the keyboard business. You can still buy modern-day-build Model Ms from Unicomp.

The IBM Model M hails from a completely different generation of computer hardware. Computers in the 1980s were expensive, so a high-quality input device like the Model M was expected and could be justified. As computers got cheaper, so did the peripherals, right down to the £8 piece-of-junk plastic keyboard the vast majority of us put up with. (The less said about those grotesque chiclet/island keyboards – like the one shown here – such as the tragic “Magic” keyboard with most Macs these days the better; you’d be better off typing directly onto the desk…)

The Model M is also a rare piece of 1980s electronic design which is still useful today (with the caveat that older Model Ms require active converters to link up to modern systems via USB). Indeed, the layout as shown in the photograph above became the standard layout with the introduction of the Model M.

Just think – 1985: Ronald Reagan was President; Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. Back to the Future was the latest blockbuster. Colin Baker was the Doctor in Doctor Who. The Nintendo Entertainment System first came out. Yet the Model M lives on.

What does this have to do with writing?

Of course, writing is typing, in the most conventional sense.

I see it this way: some writers, perhaps a lot of writers, have their particular Parker pen that they prefer to use in their writing; another analogy is that a high quality keyboard such as the IBM Model M is the equivalent to a Steinbeck piano; the £5 bargain basement plastic piece of junk you get these days is a plastic toy keyboard in comparison. They do the same function, yes; but one is a cheap compromise that does nothing well; the other is a thoughtfully crafted instrument designed to do one particular task very well. These are tools that, while functional, are also pleasurable to use, for reasons that perhaps defy logical explanation. It’s an experience to use these, and to use them for, largely, a singular purpose.

Everything about the IBM Model M trumps the £8 piece of junk; it’s from an age where computers were expensive so peripherals were less disposable and designed to last – it’s genuinely better built, with a more durable plastic, more durable keys that do not rub off or turn shiny… with a key typing feel that is superior by several orders of magnitude to musy cheap keyboards. It’s certainly an acquired taste at first, but something I deem as worthwhile.

I draft, as far as possible, at home using my desktop computer with my Model M, because it’s both functional and a pleasurable experience. (The caveat being I also own a laptop which I do use – a Lenovo Thinkpad which shares the Model M philosophy in that it is equipped with a high-quality laptop keyboard). Writing, for me at least, is cathartic, and a pleasurable experience, and this extends even to the act of writing.

There’s a certain romanticism around writers bashing out their works on a clacky typewriter. As much as I’d love to indulge in that romantic notion – I’ve not bought a typewriter yet – it would be disastrous for my workflow. I’d perhaps like to dip my toe into the retro computer space and write a la George R. R. Martin, using a computer running MS-DOS and WordStar 4 to draft in a distraction-free environment free of email, notifications, and spell-checkers, but again this would be disastrous to my workflow, requiring messing with ancient disk formats to transfer writing across manually – there’s too many added steps and opportunities for disaster.

Part of the allure of a clicky keyboard is the tactility. I do not enjoy typing on touchscreens at all; the lack of tactile feedback to both register a click and find the keys is suboptimal. A high quality mechanical keyboard, on the other hand, gives tactility in spades. The Model M’s buckling spring technology delivers an extremely satisfying tactile typing action, where the moment of actuation is synchronised exactly with the tactile bump and audible click. This is a surprisingly rare quality: a great number of modern mechanical keyboards simulate this with a slider or clicker built into the keyswitch, but the action is not authentically linked as in the buckling spring design; it’s a by-product of a mechanism not tied directly into what makes the keyboard click.

Indeed, one of the main draws in the typewriter renaissance that has come about is about that tactility, of seeing words form on the page through conscious effort. Typing out a novel on an IBM Model M feels like an experience; typing the words is a tactile interface between creative mind and the formalities of language. Typing is where the thoughts and impositions of our minds are tempered and parsed into something someone else can enjoy and elicit those same emotional responses to. Modern typing equivalents – swipy keyboards with impressive yet false haptic feedback just don’t create the same tactile feel and aura of having worked to create. Typing, especially on a high-quality keyboard such as a Model M, is the physical manifestation of the mental expedition that is crafting a story or piece of prose.

Personally, I’ve spoken before about how reading is a sensory experience. Because of my particular mental makeup, sensory joy is an important consideration, so writing becomes a sensory experience for me too. When I’m drafting away on my Model M – words clattering out before my very eyes, the buckling springs rattling with each character and keystroke; the ideas in my head forming into sentences, paragraphs and pages through this translatory process… it just feels better. I enjoy the writing more this way. And, perhaps, though this is impossible to quantify, the words I type on my Model M are better words?

Indeed, such is my belief in this sensory experience making my writing better, I find that using a Model M for my drafting impacts my motivation to write. Earlier this year, my venerable 1992 keyboard was away for an extended period for repairs; Model Ms have one Achille’s heel, being the plastic rivets that hold the internal assembly together. These rivets get brittle over time and eventually the keyboard becomes erratic; this is fixed by replacing the plastic rivets with metal bolts or screws. In the interim, I ended up purchasing a modern-day continuation of the lineage in the form of this Unicomp Mini M keyboard (manufactured on October 26th 2022) which I indeed finished the first draft of Price War: The Colour of Money on earlier this year:

The Model M is an uncommon piece of technology; computers of a similar vintage have since been completely outclassed in terms of performance… yet the Model M persists and remains as useful as it was 30 years ago. Not many items of technology can claim that accolade. My Model M works just as effectively with my Windows 11 computer with a 4.5 gigahertz AMD processor as it did with an Intel 386 with 4 megabytes of memory running MS-DOS or Windows 3.1.

I feel there is a growing appreciation for “clicky” keyboards, which is encouraging. However, I feel there’s a growing countenancing of imitators: retro-styled keyboards that, superficially, resemble older boards and typewriters… with the cursed RGB blight. Keyboards such as this:

While these keyboards are doubtless better than the standard £8 rubber dome no-name keyboards, and use mechanical switches that do improve the typing feel… I feel they’re a diversion. I feel, to a degree, that keyboards like this are designed to appeal not to serious typists but those looking to complete an aesthetic first, with the improved function coming after.

This is not a critique of those buying these keyboards; moreso, it’s an interrogation of the psyche that sells them.

I think they’re half measures.

The IBM Model M is, in my view, a full measure – and it inverts that thinking: it puts function ahead of form, though the design isn’t without its flourishes: the gently-concave keyboard bed with the raised lip, providing not only an ergonomic sweep but providing a handy pen ledge at the same time.

It’s a keyboard that makes no compromises in its mission: a no-frills but carefully-considered piece of technology that performs its function – text input – as well now as it did in 1985, and still provides a world-class typing experience. As an author, the process of writing – typing – is fundamental. If I can’t get the fundamental, core parts of what actually comprises my craft, then the stories I hope to tell will no doubt suffer too.

Buy a modern-day buckling spring Model M keyboard made by Unicomp: Buy direct HERE | From The Keyboard Company in the UK HERE

Citations/Further reading:

• https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/george-r-r-martin-tells-conan-his-secret-weapon-a-dos-computer-230217/#ixzz31hvzR3eG
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckling_spring