Computers… the writer’s godsend or a curse?

Wednesday, 31 August 2011 16:19

This is The Bearded One's blog he wrote for Black Ink White Paper (http://blackinkwhitepaper.wordpress.com/) a great place run by writers.

Computers… the writer’s godsend or a curse?
After this last weekend—Thursday morning through Sunday—I find myself somewhat in the middle.  You guessed it, the unthinkable happened.  Thursday morning I turned on my computer and was following the normal course of my day, checking email, the stats on Belva’s List.com; then the unthinkable happened—my brand new monitor shutdown. Not yet four months old and the damned screen just went blank!

Well, I wasted little time in placing a call to the store to report this misfortune and assure them that I had a receipt. Then they asked me if I had purchased the extended warranty. And I begrudgingly confessed that I hadn’t. But thank the gods that look over cheapskates like me, who think extended warranties are a rip-off, my monitor was still covered under the manufacturer. But I would have to bring it into the store to be shipped back to the factory for repairs. Which could take up to 2 weeks! 

After I had recovered from the initial shock, I bundled my new monitor up and drove it to the store, where after a few moments of information trading, and a quick test, the fellow informed me that my monitor was fine, the problem was with my desktop computer. I left the store, trying to prepare myself for the worst. Expensive repairs or even worse a new computer.

In the depths of despair, fearing the worst case scenario, I informed my wife Belva of our plight.  “She, like always, soothed my woes, telling me, “Call Bill and have him fix it.”

And as always, I argued, “He’ll take days to get it done!”
Her answer, “Can’t you use your laptop, until he’s done?”

She was right.  I called Bill, and as I knew he would, he said, “I can’t get at it until, tomorrow.” But he was coming.  I broke out the older, slower Laptop, fired it up only to discover it, too, was having trouble getting on line and was absolutely useless to me.

I spent the next half-hour in melt-down mode, filling the air with every three, four, five & six letter word I could think of, ending in ‘it’-‘itch’ and ‘unk’—and, having been born and raised in the land of Idaho, where cowboys, farmers, mill workers, and lumber jacks abound, my vocabulary of swear words is vast, Humongous even! 

Belva silenced me with one of her reproachful looks, poured a scotch and handed it to me. Baffled and defeated, I retreated to my lounger to lick my wounds and pout. It was during this bout of sulking, that I came up with the subject for this blog.

When I first started writing, I used a pencil with an eraser and a tablet of lined paper. Life was simple then, I simply rubbed out my atrocious spelling errors and changes of wording with hardly a thought. Ending up with a fairly neat and clean product.

Then came the ballpoint pen, which was easy to use, and you didn’t have to sharpen it but I always ended up with my page filled with ugly strike-throughs and scribble-outs—impossible to cleanup, leaving nothing to be done but laboriously recopy once or twice, to hopefully achieve a totally clean end product.

Then came the typewriter, which I could never perfect, even though I could play fair piano—classical as well as some mean boggie-woogie.  Oh, I could type what I was reading at a fair 60+ words per minute with minimal mistakes—and white out repaired those, but I could not for the life of me type and think at the same time. Character and plot, along with accuracy went all to hell when I tried to think and type. I had to write it with pencil or pen, then type it.

But then came the computer! For some reason the computer key board was more forgiving. Oh, sure I look at the keyboard when I type, but I have invented my own finger positions. And now I can compose and key in the words at the same time, while thinking about my story.  But only if the damned thing keeps working, and the monitor doesn’t go black.  And when the computer breaks down, there is absolutely nothing I can do, but wait for it to get fixed.  If my pencil broke I just sharpened it. If my pen broke or run out of ink I could buy another one for 59 cents. Life was so simple then.  But like all things, “Once you’ve been to Paris, it’s damned hard to be satisfied back down on the farm!” The Computer is here to stay and I might as well get used to it!  “Belva, more Scotch please.”

P.S.: Bill finished all the repairs Sunday afternoon.

The Bearded One