Tweets, typewriters, fountain pens, and quill pens

I was talking with a friend today about the San Francisco Writers Conference and the need for writers to be skilled (or able to afford to hire the skill) to build a website, blog, Tweet, and use Facebook.  My friend didn’t think it was fair.  Writers shouldn’t need to deal with this stuff.

But are things really worse than in the days before the Web?  A few decades ago, a writer needed to be a skilled typist, either that or hire a typist, in order to submit a manuscript.  Learning to type on a typewriter must have been tedious.  It’s not like a computer, where you can just backspace or move a mouse to correct an error.  You needed to avoid them in the first place.  That took skill, skill that was a lot less fun to acquire than skill in social media.

Was it any better before the typewriter?  I don’t think so.  How many people would have the proper penmanship to handcraft an entire manuscript by fountain pen?  I certainly don’t.  If I had to submit a handwritten manuscript, I wouldn’t stand a chance.  Not even with a ball point pen.    It was even worse before the fountain pen.  Can you imagine writing a manuscript with a quill pen, dipping it in the ink well every few moments, constantly blotting your manuscript to keep it from smearing?

I’ll take the web and social media any day.

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