Has technology helped or hurt your writing?
I'm running a giveaway at my
Blogspot blog
. A few notes about that: You can win The Secret Year if you don't already have it, or if you'd like another copy (perhaps to donate or give away); the giveaway links to dozens of other giveaways where you're likely to find a book to your taste; best of all, comments on that post count toward the
library challenge.
So even if you've already commented on the original post, you can squeeze more library money out of me by commenting over there.
Now for some writerly talk ...
The internet is all abuzz about ebooks and how they might change the reading and book-buying experience, but I've been thinking about how technology has already changed my writing process. I started writing at a very young age back in the pre-internet days. Low-price notebooks, lack of access to a typewriter, and the high price of typing paper all combined to make me a longhand writer. And longhand was a pain to edit. The cut-and-paste process was literally that, a mess with tape and scissors. When I got older, I had a typewriter, but typing was a pain too, especially typing a manuscript for submission. Too many mistakes could make a page unsightly enough to throw away. Having a brilliant idea to add a paragraph on page 3 of a 15-page story meant retyping pages 3 through 15, and therefore it had to be a really great paragraph to make one do all that extra work!
Therefore, back then, I did a lot more "pre-writing" thinking before I ever put words on a page.
Now, editing is easy, revising is easy, and printing a perfect manuscript (when you even have to print a physical copy anymore) is done at the touch of a button. I can write my first drafts on a keyboard--something I once thought I'd never do--because I can change them so easily. Cutting and pasting, and undoing those operations, are so easy. Now I do much more of my trial-and-error, early-draft work right on the keyboard.
The temptation with computers is to declare a piece finished too soon. The sentences look so neat and nicely formatted! They look like a finished product--not like the old scissored-together longhand drafts that once signaled my early work. At the same time, I'm more likely to try a revision idea nowadays, even if I'm not sure about it, because it's easier to save the original and perform all sorts of word surgery on the copy than it used to be. Since I don't have to retype umpteen pages just to insert a paragraph on page 3, I'm more likely to insert that paragraph and make the story a bit better.
Do you think technology has helped make your writing better? Or hurt it? Or do you think it's made no difference at all?
Now for some writerly talk ...
The internet is all abuzz about ebooks and how they might change the reading and book-buying experience, but I've been thinking about how technology has already changed my writing process. I started writing at a very young age back in the pre-internet days. Low-price notebooks, lack of access to a typewriter, and the high price of typing paper all combined to make me a longhand writer. And longhand was a pain to edit. The cut-and-paste process was literally that, a mess with tape and scissors. When I got older, I had a typewriter, but typing was a pain too, especially typing a manuscript for submission. Too many mistakes could make a page unsightly enough to throw away. Having a brilliant idea to add a paragraph on page 3 of a 15-page story meant retyping pages 3 through 15, and therefore it had to be a really great paragraph to make one do all that extra work!
Therefore, back then, I did a lot more "pre-writing" thinking before I ever put words on a page.
Now, editing is easy, revising is easy, and printing a perfect manuscript (when you even have to print a physical copy anymore) is done at the touch of a button. I can write my first drafts on a keyboard--something I once thought I'd never do--because I can change them so easily. Cutting and pasting, and undoing those operations, are so easy. Now I do much more of my trial-and-error, early-draft work right on the keyboard.
The temptation with computers is to declare a piece finished too soon. The sentences look so neat and nicely formatted! They look like a finished product--not like the old scissored-together longhand drafts that once signaled my early work. At the same time, I'm more likely to try a revision idea nowadays, even if I'm not sure about it, because it's easier to save the original and perform all sorts of word surgery on the copy than it used to be. Since I don't have to retype umpteen pages just to insert a paragraph on page 3, I'm more likely to insert that paragraph and make the story a bit better.
Do you think technology has helped make your writing better? Or hurt it? Or do you think it's made no difference at all?
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