There is a set of mystery movies, The Thin Man, with Willam Powell and Myrna Loy. My family watches them every so often, and I watched the third one, Another Thin Man, today. Not relevant to the plot is the fact that one of the suspects is writing a mystery play.

In the scene where he gets questioned, a beautiful basic mechanical typewriter is on the table next to him. At another point, he has this look on his face; you can tell he is absorbing the drama in front of him to use in a future work.

That movie was released in 1939. Last weekend, in July of 2026, writers from all around the globe got together on the internet to write together (see www.ohhow.net for more). While we used technology that could barely be imagined back then, some of us also had sounds which imitate the clacks of a classic typewriter. And you can be certain all of us have had the same expression on our face at some point.

That typewriter was his computer. Eighty-seven years later, amateur writers work in many new ways, yet also in all the ones used for decades, even centuries. It’s a nice thought.