Learn Touch Typing!

Hello writers!

On August 20, 2021, I started learning touch typing.

Let me back up.

In middle school, I had a computer class where I was supposed to learn how to type. "But I already know how to type," my pubescent brain complained. "The keys are clearly marked, you just poke the one you want, then move on to the next. Easy." Unfortunately, my teachers at the time felt the same way, so they didn't actually care if we learned how to type. Instead, they left us to our own devices, with a computer program that basically just said "push this button!" with no concern for teaching the correct technique.

I played a lot of Runescape and Miniclip in that computer class.

In high school, I got a cell phone, and I learned to type with T9Word. If you're not old, you might not remember, but T9Word was how you typed text messages on phones back when they weren't smart and they just had a number pad. Then later I got a phone with a slide-out keyboard, and I learned to type pretty fast on that. I learned basically where the different letters were on a keyboard since my phone had a QWERTY keyboard and unlimited text messages, but I was still typing with just my thumbs.

This year I got a new computer, and I decided I wanted to learn how to type fast. I thought I was kind of fast already, but I knew I had room to improve. After all, some people can type 160 words per minute or more! I didn't know my speed, but I knew it wasn't anywhere near that.

I started on August 20 on keybr.com. This site was interesting because instead of teaching you all the letters at once, it starts with just a few letters and then adds more as you learn. For me, this was a great way to learn where the keys are on the keyboard. I practiced off and on until September 3, practicing about 7-8 days in that time, until I had learned where all the keys were. After I felt comfortable typing without looking at the keyboard, I wanted to switch to real typing tests that used real words, since that's more useful in real life. So I switched over to 10fastfingers.com and that's when I learned how slow I really was. I never took a typing test before I started practicing, which is a real bummer because I really wish I knew how slow I was. But when I took my first typing tests on 10fastfingers, I averaged a little under 30 words per minute. My scores were all over the place, sometimes just 10 words per minute, other times up to 40 or so max.

Today is November 7, about two months after I started on 10fastfingers, and my average speed is now 68 WPM, with a personal best of 82 WPM. That's still nowhere near a world record or anything, but it's definitely respectable, and I'm practicing to keep getting faster all the time.

So why does this matter? Well, typing is an important skill in our modern age of computers and tech. Plus as an aspiring author, my writing speed really matters for my ability to tell a story. If I type slowly, my mind can work faster than my fingers, and I have to slow down to write. But if I can write quickly, my hands can keep up with my brain and I can write without interrupting my train of thought to type out every word slowly. Even for people who don't write novels, typing quickly can be an important skill at work, such as writing emails or business documents, and with the amount of time most people spend at a computer each day, any little boost to productivity can make a big impact in the long-term.

If you want to learn touch typing, there's one thing I'd recommend above anything else: get a spare keyboard, and spraypaint it so you can't see the letters. Later this week I'll make a post about my Alphasmart Neo and how I use it for writing, but when I started learning touch typing that was my big project that helped a ton: I took apart my Alphasmart keyboard, sanded all the keys, and painted the whole thing. I put little balls of clear nail polish on the home keys so I could feel where F and J are, but other than that the whole keyboard is unmarked. And that has been immensely helpful in learning to type by touch rather than looking at the keyboard, because I had to. Even while I'm writing this, I'm sometimes making mistakes, but I have learned to fix them without looking at the keyboard because there's nothing to look at. So every time I write, I'm learning and getting better. If I can go from 30 WPM to 70 WPM in two months, I truly believe anyone can. I haven't been practicing every day or practicing for five hours each day or anything like that. I've practiced maybe 2-3 hours per week, maybe 15 minutes a day on average. Some days an hour at a time, other days none at all. So if you have any time at all to type, you can learn and get faster, and it will make your life better in the long run because you'll spend less time typing and more time creating.

And honestly, it's just fun being able to brag to people that I can type fast now. I can't wait until I hit 100 WPM!

Hope you're having a great day!

- Michael Wolfe Price

P.S. - I'm sorry I've been so absent lately. I don't think anyone reads this blog anyway, but if anyone does: life has been kind of a lot lately, I had a rat in my basement for a while that I had to deal with and then I was sick for a while, and now it's NaNoWriMo so a lot of my writing time is going toward that so I haven't had as much time to write for this blog. I'm hoping I can get more consistent with it, at least after November is over if not sooner, but I figure for now, the blog no one reads takes a back burner compared to some other more important projects at the moment.

And hey, if anyone does read this, leave me a comment and say hi! I might have to reshuffle my priorities if I found out someone actually cared! ;)