Low Tech Writing

I was thinking about the technology of writing recently. Many years ago a writer would have written this blog on a bit of paper, with a pencil, sitting under a tree.

Very low tech. Being a writer used to be about fnding your muse. All of the writer's energy went into creativity. The means of recording that expression was so basic that it was seldom even considered.

Today, a writer has many choices. He can still write upon paper with a pencil but eventually he has to transfer it to a computer to actually do anything with it. So most writers usually write directly to computer.

Which leaves us with many choices. First, we have a choice of computers. Do we go desk top or lap top? Do we go dial up or high speed, such as cable internet? Do we go hard wired or wireless? Do we go windows or Mac?

Unfortunately, by the time we make all of these decisions, which either basically anchors us to a desk or gives us the freedom to write untethered (but still within 150feet of the router) we have expended so much energy on the means of writing that we may have lost our muse.

For the non-writers who are reading this, our muse is that little voice inside our head that tells us what to write. Sometimes we have friendly muses and write nice little ditties about gardening and stuff. Sometimes our muse moonlights as a serial killer. Mine used to be a stand up comic in a little known section of Hell. He has a wicked sense of humor -- so blame him.

But technology and creative writing have seemingly gone down different paths. I am in the early stages of writing a novel and have literally spent two months reviewing software. Shouldn't I have spent that time writing?

So I have decided to throw off the shackles of technology and am dictating this blog to my wife, who is writing it on a scrap of paper as we sit by the pool. She will eventually transfer it to the internet via a computer but I don't care. Today I am low tech.