The Good Old Days

I admit it. I miss my typewriter. The last one I owned, a Smith Corona Deville 750, was a reliable, comfortable friend. My ex often went to sleep to the sound of my click-clacking away on it, sitting at the tiny desk next to our bed, though now that I think about it, perhaps that Should that have been a hint of things to come. My first typewriter was a cheap manual that my mother bought for me when I was twelve years old. Frankly, I still wish I owned them both, though my wife, Sherri, swears that if I go back to using a typewriter, I'm on my own in terms of getting a manuscript digitized.

If memory serves, I sold my first short story back in 1995 or thereabouts - and I wrote it on that Smith Corona typewriter. A couple of years after that, exasperated by my having to re-key entire manuscript pages, my good friend John Helfers showed up at my apartment one day with a used computer running Windows 3.1. He moved my typewriter out of the way, set it up, and ordered me to learn to use it. I did, and of course, I'm writing this on a computer far more advanced than that one. Still, there is something... deliberate about the typewriter. Writing on one requires a certain conscientiousness, an attention to detail, that I like. It turns writing into a physical act of creation with an immediately tangible result. Computers can make for lazy writing: "I'll go back and change it later."

But those were the good old days, right? So here I am - trying once again to put together a real website with the kind, patient assistance of my friend Tim Ward (thanks again, Tim!). But then I find out that this site isn't enough. But... I'm already on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and Tumblr! Still not enough. My friend Mary Robinette Kowal says, "You need an author account at Goodreads." Tim adds, "You have an Amazon Author page, right?" I've added those, too, and with any luck at all, the effort will be worth it. (Tim keeps adding to the things we need on this site, and I'm going to forgive him one day, and also buy him a nice dinner for his trouble.)

I'm thankful I have people to guide me through some of this, and I imagine that in the not-too-distant future, I'll slowly dip my toes into the dark, mysterious waters of self-publishing, too. I may even take a peek at podcasting, though the word itself sounds suspicious to me - like tossing an alien egg across the cosmos. Still, I find myself thinking that somewhere along the way, I turned into that cranky old codger sitting in the corner and mumbling about how it was done in my day. All of this technology - and it is amazing that so much of our world is what we called science fiction when I was a kid - takes writers away from writing and pulls them in a hundred different directions. Some of those directions are good, some maybe less so.

It's funny to think that in fifty years, someone else will be looking back on this time as the good old days, too. I'll be long gone by then - barring that successful cloning project I've been waiting for - but I do hope people find this site (and all the other connected/associated ones along with it) useful and enjoyable. I have plans for it, including talking about things other than writing and publishing. Things like cooking, coffee, and wines... things like poker and knowing when to fold 'em... and even things like MS (my illness) and Type 1 Diabetes (my son's illness). I think about a lot of things, and I'll do my best to share some of them here on a regular basis.

In the meantime, I invite you to explore this site - which is still officially under construction, but we're getting closer to mostly done - and share your feedback with me. If there's one certain positive about leaving those good old days behind it's that the technology we now have brings us closer together. We may as well take advantage of that, yes?