Retyping a story from scratch

As I've mentioned, I've been doing an exercise where I daily retype chunks of an existing story by a known writer. I've found this to be enlightening and a good antidote to the tendency to just get absorbed in a good story when I'm trying to analyze it.

I'm considering applying this to editing, by retyping a story from scratch. 

It seems kind of crazy, having worked with a word processor for so long. I've had access to a computer since my first high-school essays, so I've rarely been forced to retype anything.  When I first used an Apple II when I was small, I even tried to make a simple text editor, before I quite knew what I wanted. 

I'm pretty willing to try other things, though. I often work with a paper notebook to generate new prose, and it surprises me how often people often comment on that. It's got lots of advantages: nothing is more portable, the save function is amazingly foolproof, and the lack of editing tools pushes you towards forward motion. It's a different process, and that's a good tool to have. 

At the same time, I credit the word processor and the computer for first making me believe that it might be possible to create something so labor-intensive as a novel. The idea of retyping every last thing to fix a simple typo would be maddening.

But editing can be a crutch. Sometimes you need to start over. I'm working on a rewrite of a very old story and I feel like every word needs a good hard look; retyping it from scratch might be the best thing for it, if I'm willing to commit the time.