“…through the Yellow Pages…” Remember that jingle? I thought of it the other day when I was drafting something for work. But in my case, it's "let my fingers do the writing." It seems I am unable to draft a piece of writing using pen and paper. My brain doesn’t work as well as it does when I apply my fingertips to a keyboard in front of a computer screen.
In addition to shift in the process of writing, my handwriting has gone downhill over the years. I could blame it on the fact that I type more than I write, and I type more quickly than I can write. My theory only goes so far, as my husband is also on the computer all day, and he has nice handwriting.
I took Typing from Mrs. LaVigne at Framingham North High on an electric typewriter. I used a typewriter in high school and in college, but only for final drafts. I wrote drafts by hand. Although Dartmouth College had one of the most innovative and sophisticated computer centers in the country, I still used my Smith Corona. I dabbled on the Mac, but would still think “This is neat, now where’s my typewriter.”
One night during winter finals in senior year (1986), I was happily typing away at a paper, and the power went out. Cries of frustration resonated through the dorm. Mine might have been a little quieter, as I at least still had what I had written. I could touch it. Some students didn’t save their computer files, and lost pages and pages of final exam papers. I was somewhat relieved I hadn’t fallen prey to the beginnings of the computer craze. I certainly wasn’t going to start now.
Fast forward to business school at Babson College in 1990, I owned a PC with WordPerfect and Excel. I even taught myself enough in WordPerfect to launch a newsletter for the business school students. I wrote papers, created graphs and charts for my finance class. I used the VAX email system at school to communicate to other students and some professors. This is when I found out that I could get my thoughts down a lot faster using bits and bytes than a #2 pencil.
It is now 2010. Next year, I will be celebrating my 25th college reunion. I look back at my evolving appreciation for computers and how it can improve my productivity. And boy oh boy, if I had had a little bit of financial savvy, I would have invested in Apple and Microsoft.
When using a computer to write, I can remove entire thoughts without seeing a mess on the page, find synonyms, embed graphics and charts, change fonts. The draft-to-final version takes less time. And I know I don’t use half of what I could be using. I write really fun letters to Abby at Camp Tel Noar, which might include some posts on her Facebook page, photos of us or her cousins in Atlanta and different fonts and colors to spice it up. We have a color printer, so she gets some good material at rest hour.
The other day, Abby and I were playing school. She was the teacher. She is always the teacher. Abby or Miss Jennings, as she called herself, asked me to write a paragraph about my family. She gave me a piece of white lined paper and a pencil. I looked at her. She asked me what was wrong. I shook off my slight panic and said it was nothing. I picked up the pencil and started to write. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I felt liberated!
After “Miss Jennings” corrected my paper, she returned it with a big smiley sticker. She said, “The smiley is because the story is really good. But your handwriting is awful.”
Video killed the radio star. And the word processor killed my penmanship.
Note: This blog post was drafted using Microsoft Word. No pencils or erasers were sharpened or harmed.
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