Thursday, November 05, 2015

Ch-ch-ch-Changes.

I know writers who still write everything longhand. Then later re-type all of that stuff into a word processor. (WTF?! Right?) Or have a secretary put it into a word processor for them.

Two writers I know don't even write anymore. They dictate into one of those freaking voice-recognition machines which turns it into text. Rod Serling worked like that, but back in his day he used a dictation machine. His secretary would play it back and turn it into typewritten script.

I don't think I could work that way. But of course when I was 18 years old and had a writing instructor who was a by-Jove award winning professional author (Doris Buchanan Smith--no relation) I didn't think that I could go from writing longhand to writing on a typewriter.

However, I did. I made that alteration in my work habits. And then from manual to electric. And then from electric typewriter to word processor. 

But dictating that stuff directly into a voice recognition program? I don't know. There's something I've gotten accustomed to about the (to use the liberals' favorite new word) transition from brain to fingertips to keyboard. I've grown so accustomed to it. I've been writing basically this way for forty diddly-darned years.

Next they'll be wanting me to get a USB socket installed in the base of my skull so I cab upload my stories directly into the streaming Internet.

Screw that.


Leave me alone. I'm busy.
Doris Buchanan Smith. The only professional writing teacher I ever had.

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