In Murder, She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher pecked out mysteries on an old Royal typewriter in 1984 and ended up tapping them out on her laptop by 1996. What changes in technology had the greatest impact on you in your writing career?
Right, here’s the problem.
I came to writing late. I wasn’t even writing a decade ago, I was too busy being an accountant. That means that I missed the era of typewriters and carbon paper and photocopiers and correction fluid that my fellow bloggers were forced to contend with. Also, I’m only twenty-nine years old (yes I am) so basically anything before the advent of Taylor Swift is strange, antiquated and exotic to me.
So how do I answer this question when basically everything I use is everything I have ever used? I suppose I’ll have to do what I normally do and just make stuff up.
Let’s get started then.
But then, joy of joys, god, or maybe mother nature, invented the birds, and since then, man has been fascinated by the creatures, working out just how they fly and what is the best way to eat them. A by-product of the latter was a surfeit of feathers. Indeed, there are stories recorded in the holy texts of many religions of the world drowning under a tsunami of surplus feathers (the word ‘drown’ is simply a corruption of the old English word ‘down’ meaning feathers). Eventually some bright spark suggested using the feathers for bedding and other practical purposes, one of which was writing, and so the quill pen was invented. The first quills were dipped in blood or mud or sometimes tar but in the following millennium, mankind successfully tamed and domesticated the squid and since then, ink has been the writing substance of choice.
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This, kids, is a typewriter |
Have a great weekend, and happy writing.
Abir
4 November 2022