The topic of the day posited the question, “Does technology help you write?” Of course. Without it I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t write/blog at all.
I’ve been using technology to help me write since I was an undergraduate student when I used a clunky manual typewriter to complete my papers. Then, a miracle occurred–computers were available to the common man, or woman as it were.
Now if you are considerably younger than me, your concept of a computer and the one I’m talking about are two totally different animals. I’m speaking of a Commodore 64 using the oh-so-impressive Paper Clip word processing program. I thought it was magic! Just imagine not having to retype an entire page if you messed something up! Just push a button and a beautiful dot-matrix tooth-gear driven (or pin feed as my computer guy DH calls it) page rolled off the printer. Yes!
That Commodore 64 with the 5″ floppies took me through the end of my undergraduate days and into my first master’s degree. For a mere $500 I got the computer, printer, and a TV to use as the monitor.
Somewhere along the line I decided that composing at the computer was the only sensible way to approach writing. It seemed really stupid to me to continue to write out material on a piece of paper and then spend more time copying that onto the computer. Cutting out that paper step was natural and painless for me. I’ve never looked back.
Add to that the spell checker and grammar checker ability, and technology helps with writing in quite practical ways as well.
As for blogging with WordPress, I don’t bother with the step of composing in Word and copying and pasting the blog here. I just compose within WordPress and move on my merry way. Again, why go through an extra step?
Writing and technology go together as naturally as apples and Fall. I suppose you could remove one from the other, but why would you want to?
BisonWoman's Ballyhoo 