Lady Dae Writes

It doesn’t matter which one you use, the fact of the matter is that the word processor has made our lives a whole lot easier. Sure, the spell and grammar check sucks on a lot of them because they don’t read in context or slang, but it has saved us in the long run.

Let’s go back to the time where all we had was pen and paper. While that was wonderful in and of itself, if we say… wanted to give our novels a complete overhaul, that meant writing the entire thing over, by hand, and God forbid you messed up or coffee spilled on it. So that meant a writer didn’t have the luxury of making as many mistakes as they wanted because they could always go back and revise three or four times. They could, but it would take a while.

Fast forward to the day of the typewriter. Well, it’s not as hard to write since typing is much faster than handwritten stuff. But I dare you to type without a bottle of whiteout handy. Not only that, but still think long and hard about addition and edits because one more line means retyping the entire chapter. Man that’s a lot of white out and paper, that means more money spent on paper and not to mention ink! I’m a college student now and I’d be flat out broke if I tried to write like this.

Fast forward to the age of the word processor people and get down on your knees and thank the heavens! Sure the spell check is lacking and we still have to self edit to catch typos and junk, but we can edit on a whim now. It’s only a matter of select all, paste in a new document and get to ripping your own works to shreds. If you don’t like the changes, undo goes a long way, or just go back with the backup you saved. It’s that simple. Add a line if you want. Add as thousand. And guess what? Only print when you absolutely need to, which means no need for ink to type anymore. Of course, you have to remember to save, but the autosave on recent processors have been nothing less than a lifesaver, particularly if you’re still using a desktop and the lights go out on you.

Want to change the name of a character? No longer do we need to search the entire document and manually change it. The find and replace is your best friend… for those kinds of things. And page numbering and headers have never been easier. If you add a new page, they adjust accordingly. Not only has it never been easier to writer, edit, and organize a story, it makes writing essays for school a lot easier. While we’re at it, let’s just be thankful for the computer. But alas, I’d be typing all day for the reasons to be thankful for that. Computers are self explanatory.

But because we love to complain about our processors (myself included). I thought I’d remind us exactly why we should be thankful for them. They made the life of a writer so much easier. Three cheers for the word processor!

I get down on my knees and thank God for this one? Why? Well, let’s go back to the days before internet, where if you wanted to know something or needed clarity on it, we had to travel all the way to the library to find a book on the subject, if we could find it. Then we had to search those books for the research we needed. And if it wasn’t in a book, then that means for inspiration and the ability to write about places no known, we had to travel there ourselves. Tough luck if you didn’t have the money to travel and see for yourself.

That meant that we writers really were stuck ‘writing what we knew, because unless we lucked out and a former Gion geisha who might have been happening to travel the states ran into us and agreed to give us an interview (that hasn’t ever happened btw) we couldn’t write about them, no matter how much we wanted to or how fascinated we were. And you try finding the French translations of certain phrases, or even trying to write accurate fanfiction back in those days (hell, fanfiction gets around through the internet). Point is, that’s a lot of research and a lot more time writing my novel which is inspired by man of the cultures, ideas, and readings I’ve done on the internet.

So we fast forward to the 2000’s and not only is there no excuse for us not to have accuracy in novels, but there’s also no excuse for anyone who wants to write a novel not to, or at least it makes the terms ‘I don’t know where to start’ obsolete. Check my blogroll folks. There’s a wealth of information on how to write anything from a paragraph to an encyclopedia on the internet, not to mention last minute stuff that you just want to be sure of is no more than a google search away. Not sure about a word and worried that your MS word spell check didn’t catch a wrong spelling or that you have the right one and MS word is just tripping as always? Google it.

Want to blend someone else’s culture into your book but have no clue what the culture is about? Google it or Yahoo it, whatever. The point is there is now no excuse for inaccuracies in novels unless you just purely want to make up your own customs through imagination. The internet is also a lifesaver for those who don’t have the transportation to get where they want, when they want, freely in the case of not having a car, or competing for it with family. And just about anyone can get to it someone. From the phones, to the tablets, computer, public library, the local college, it’s pretty easy to get to it. And finding what you want is no more than few words and a click away.

The drawback? Well, because everybody can access the internet, and everybody can get a website, or a blog, and throw together some information, the internet isn’t entirely accurate all the time and the best way to research is to cross reference different source. The possibility for inaccuracy is the very reason most colleges make you go through journals and academic essays from their own sites. At least if it’s in a book, it’s usually accurate and dependable, if you can find the book that is. Either way, the internet is still much quicker. Also, the internet needs electricity and is quite frankly very dangerous and vulnerable. All it takes is one virus and or some apocalypse that knocks out all the electricity and bye-bye internet.

But while we pray such a thing never happens, let’s give it up for the internet. It certainly made the job of us writers ten times easier. I would personally like to tell it that I don’t know how I would live without you. I wouldn’t have this blog for one it you weren’t around.

Yeah, the public education may be crappy now, but the fact of the matter is it has helped to make education more widespread than what was available hundreds of years ago. The fact that it’s so easy to get educated if you halfway care about education has affected not only the writer, but the readers too. How?

Well, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. No one had time to read two hundred, three hundred years ago. They were too busy milking the cows, making dinner, making the soap, the cheese etc… Many didn’t see a value in education when there was all that work to be done, and so most of your writers and their readers were middle class and up because they had the time to read and write the stuff, not to mention they were more likely to be educated enough to write and read the novels in the first place.

Fast forward two to three hundred years and sure, say what you want about public school education (I have a lot to say, but now isn’t the time nor place), but the fact that education is no longer just for the elite of society has made a huge difference in who writes and who reads.

For one, writers don’t have to impress the educated upper class with fancy words and prose and the stuff in the novels I read for school that slow the story down for me. Writers are now free to write whatever they want, however they want, and a healthy dose of controversy is good for the novel. Anyone can write a novel nowadays, especially with the easy access to information (that’s for tomorrow). But the fact of the matter is, when writing novels, a writer really doesn’t have to shoot much higher than an eighth grade level to appeal to the masses whether writing adult fiction or YA, and much lower than that for middle grade. Reading novels is to unwind and while we writers still have to impress readers with style, a good story, and original execution, we don’t have to worry about showing people how smart we are by saying something in a whole paragraph with large words that need footnotes that could have been said in one or two sentences.

Also, now the readership doesn’t have to be upper class not only because people have more time to read the novels, but many more people have the ability to at least get through a novel because more emphasis is put on at least knowing how to read and write limitedly, at least a lot more than was put on it a few hundred years ago. It’s not perfect, but it’s there.

More people who read (mass readership) means more audiences who want to read and more topics to choose from that will appeal to all sorts of backgrounds.

So let’s give a toast to widespread education, more than public. It still needs work and there are still a lot of people who don’t know how to read, but enough for us writers to get our share of the pie.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I decided to do a series on things the writer should be thankful for the entire week. We should be thankful for some of these things all year round actually, but for the sake of being in the spirit, I decided this week was the opportune week to do so. Anyway today’s thing that a writer should be thankful for

I don’t think people fully appreciate what pen and paper did, not to mention the easy accessibility and now the cheapness of it. But let’s think about it. Before pen and paper, stories were told orally, and if they managed to get written down, it was on yards and yards of stone tablets that you had to use a hammer and nail to chip away at like in the Flintstones. Not only would it be hell to write a novel, but hell for people to carry stone tablets around if that was the case. We’re not even talking about the fact that when these things were written in stone tablet, there was no printing press. So I wouldn’t write a book in a lifetime let alone a book in one year or three or four months.

But think if we were forced to do that, writers would have big strong arm muscles, not to mention there would be no such thing as an overweight writer, and I wouldn’t have to go running every day. Alas, we don’t have to because at the very least, everyone can afford pen and paper nowadays, so let’s talk about the benefits of such a thing as pen and paper.

Well, for one, nowadays it’s cheap. You can get a pack of cheap ink pens for a dollar (unless you’re like me and spend ten to twenty dollars on nice pens and if I had the cash, maybe more). You can find notebook paper for about fifty cents a pack, ten cents when the stores have overstocked the stuff at the end of the summer back to school sale. You can take it anywhere and no one is going say a word about it. Jot down sudden ideas in a notepad without looking rude for taking out your laptop or phone in the middle of a conversation. In the middle of class when you’re bored listening to your professor talk, you can write stories and play it off for taking notes. Not to mention no one cares about a piece of paper, so while someone might want to steal your laptop, no one is going to steal paper and cheap pens and if they do, that’s just sad and desperate. I’d give it away if someone asks.

The drawback? Don’t get this stuff wet or it becomes brittle and prone to mildew. And it burns, so keep this thing out of heat and away from fire. Also keep it away from children under the age of five and depending on how ‘terrible’ or hardheaded your child is, maybe even until about nine because nothing is worse than writing something and then a child coming to marker up, cut up, or tear up all that hard work. Also keep it away from the clean fanatic who will see old pieces of paper lying around and call it trash despite the fact that the front and back is covered, not to mention the husbands, wives, and other family members who will take your pieces of paper and write that important number or information in the margin of your work. And I dare you to try to write with pen and paper while driving. In fact, don’t do it if you value your life.

Overall though, if a writer has nothing else to be thankful for, pen and paper are definitely two things to be thankful for. It makes a writer’s life a lot easier.