I've recently bought a new laptop. Presumably the updated technology will make my writing life easier in the long term but, in the short term, I find the whole thing a pain. Even with my husband taking on most of the donkey work, time spent weighing up the virtues of different models followed by
learning the quirks of a new operating system is time away from writing, as far as I'm concerned, and that's before I get started on the guilt at what the rich world's lust for progress does to the impoverished south.
I wonder if creative writing would be so popular these days if we didn't have
such easy access to word processing technology. I doubt I could've managed several drafts of a 100,000 word novel on my mother's old Olivetti portable where, if I got overexcited and typed too fast, the keys clumped together in the middle. I suppose if you were to develop RSI in those days, you'd either have to hire a secretary or fall by the wayside. One way of weeding out the competition.
Due to RSI, which crept up on me in the middle of an MA course (not a writing MA) over ten years ago, I'm dependent upon voice recognition software for all my writing.
learning the quirks of a new operating system is time away from writing, as far as I'm concerned, and that's before I get started on the guilt at what the rich world's lust for progress does to the impoverished south.
I wonder if creative writing would be so popular these days if we didn't have
such easy access to word processing technology. I doubt I could've managed several drafts of a 100,000 word novel on my mother's old Olivetti portable where, if I got overexcited and typed too fast, the keys clumped together in the middle. I suppose if you were to develop RSI in those days, you'd either have to hire a secretary or fall by the wayside. One way of weeding out the competition.
Due to RSI, which crept up on me in the middle of an MA course (not a writing MA) over ten years ago, I'm dependent upon voice recognition software for all my writing.
It's marvellous how it converts my voice into text, yet it still gets it wrong at least 25% of the time, a far higher fail-rate than my typing, so it's also pretty frustrating. Some of the errors can be quite amusing – someone even suggested leaving them in to create a kind of surreal story, but they're not that amusing – but, because they're always genuine words and can easily hide themselves away, I tend to correct as I go along in case I forget what I meant to say, making any writing a stop-start process, with constant interruptions to the creative flow. On the other hand, I'm reading my work aloud right from the very first draft, which might be an asset, although I'm not sure it shows in the quality of the text. Sometimes I dream of how much more I might have produced if I could let my fingers take the strain, but we all have to do it our own way, and I'm grateful to have the opportunity to do it at all.
"I have never understood how many writers moan and groan about how awful writing is. Absolute nonsense."
Diana Athill ◊ Read the Interview
What do you think? Have you tried voice recognition software? How does it impact on the writing life?
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