As I’ve been sitting here going
through the delightful tutorial for Scrivener, (delightful because they keep
telling me to take a break for tea), I find myself reflecting on a journey I’ve
been on since I decided to finally begin writing. No, not the actual writing
journey, with the craft learning curve, and the submitting learning curve, and
the editing learning curve, et al, but a closely linked journey. My TECHNOLOGY
JOURNEY. The journey that had me so frustrated at one point last week that I
tweeted about my love/hate relationship with technology.
When I started writing in earnest,
putting fingertips to keyboard, I was blissfully ignorant of all the technology
I was going to have to learn to use. Lots. Of. Technology. Even as I type those
words I can hear several people I know laughing loudly, with the loudest laugh
coming from all the way across the country—my friend and I.T. savior. I’m not
exactly a technology savant, to put it nicely. But when I decided to have a
second career as a writer, I had to get smart—okay, not smart, but at least
capable—fast.
Over the past two years I’ve had to
learn to: set up a blog and keep it going, Tweet and exist in the
Twittersphere, do my edits using Track Changes, move from the old PC to a
MacBook, and figure out innumerable little fiddly problems with MS Word. This
short list is just a sampling. The list could go on and on. Now I’m facing
getting a true website/landing page set up, and because I guess I needed a new
challenge I’m also learning how to use Scrivener.
So it came as a nice surprise when
I recently met a writer who proclaimed she ‘hates technology.’ I quickly came
to understand that she hates it enough that she does her first draft writing in
longhand, rarely emails, and has a true aversion to social media. Love her!!
But here’s the kicker: she’s young enough, that unlike me, she grew up with
technology.
I’ve been assuming all along that
everyone under the age of thirty-five is born with a tech gene, or a chip
embedded in their brain, and that it all came naturally. I’m sure it does come
naturally to this writer, but for whatever reason she has more or less turned
her back on technology—for now. I say ‘for now’ because she will soon find out
that she has almost no choice but to build that platform, a platform designed
and constructed in the ether.
I’m sure I’ll continue to bitch and
complain and wail about my love/hate relationship with technology. But the
truth is, I cannot imagine doing this job without it. Literally having the
world at my fingertips and the ability to manipulate written words with ease
are things I could never give up at this point. I’m too spoiled. And aren’t we
all?
Happy Writing--Be it on a computer, pad of lined paper, papyrus, or stone tablet.
