As a writer are you a ‘Technophile’
or ‘Old School’?
I think when it comes to
our writing most of us are somewhere in between. But no matter how tech savvy
we are, or have to be, most of us have a favorite device.
I love my old Toshiba
laptop, I bought it almost a decade ago, it’s large, over 17 inches, so has a
great screen which makes it easy on the eyes. But all good things must come to
an end. It’s getting old, and due to many moves, one or two keys are getting a
little tricky. (I bought an additional keyboard, easy fix, right? But a
temporary one.) I also have an Asus, which is okay, my husband insisted a few
years ago I needed a new computer, so I got one, and used it a little,
mainly for everything but my writing. For writing, it was always back to my
comfort zone. My big Toshiba. Last year he thought I should upgrade, again, so
I bought a hp, yes, my writing is still on the Toshiba.
In movies, we often see a
writer portrayed as someone who still loves their old typewriter, (I’m not that
old school) and who has piles of notes everywhere and yet he/she knows exactly
what is where, so ‘woe betide’ anyone who moves them! The second part is half
true, I do have piles of notes, I scribble ideas down and have to sort them
later, but most of my work is done on the computer, my lovely old Toshiba.
Even in old episodes of
Murder She Wrote, you see in the opening sequence Jessica Fletcher graduates
throughout the series from typewriter, to word processor, to computer.
So, my goal for this weekend is to finally switch everything to the new one.
There is another little
issue with my reluctance to change, English and American keyboards are not the
same. I should probably explain that while I was born and raised in the UK, I
have spent most of my adult life in the USA, and now I am back in the UK,
(older and wiser, of course, grin) so I’m used to an American keyboard, I write
in American English, and decades ago I inadvertently began calling my mum
‘mom’, and everyone in my family ‘honey’.
I like to know where my
keys are, don’t like to interrupt the flow of writing with worrying that I’m
hitting the wrong key on a UK keyboard, or if I’m using US or UK spelling etc.,
I continue to write in American English, and all my computers are US versions. As with all
things in writing, consistency is best and that was how I started out.
Do you have a favorite
device? A favorite place to write? I’d love to know.
