When I was in high school,
not quite so far back as when this photo was taken, I signed up for a typing course. Not because I wanted to go into business but because, even then, I aspired to become a writer. Naive though I was, I knew writers had progressed beyond the quills of Jane Austen’s time. If I wanted to write, I knew I must learn to type. My typing teacher, Mr. P., taught me the needed skills to produce neat term papers, skills that would later help pay my bills.
In my first office job, we typed on IBM Selectrics, a typewriter with correctable film ribbons, and ball elements for changeable fonts.
When our first son was born, 
I quit work to become a stay-at-home mom. Over time, I typed family letters, essays, op-eds, and cookbooks at one end of our dining table on an IBM Wheelwriter. Meanwhile, in the den, our growing sons played games on their Commodore 64, a cherished Christmas gift from Grandpa.
A few years later, we bought a CompuAdd 386. With college tuition on the horizon, I soon returned to office work. By then, I’d studied and was proficient in WordPerfect. It was the last decade of the 20th century. We were ready for a fast technological ride from mechanical hardware to mind boggling software.
Do you recall when you first heard the word Internet? In scarcely an eye’s blink, this invisible web expanded 
well beyond a science-fiction writer’s imaginings. In less than a generation, we traveled from dial-up modems to WiFi. Now, in seconds, we fling our thoughts around the world.
When I ponder how the Internet has influenced my writing life, I’m awed. I email peers in Hawaii, Wisconsin, and New Jersey. With a few clicks, we meet, critique, and hold online workshops. We make travel arrangements then follow friends’ flights on flight tracking sites. We email warm cyber hugs for a rejection, and cyber bubbly to celebrate a first sale. On Yahoo Groups, we reach out for help to find the perfect word, to find a reputable book mark printer, or for the best way to kill off the bad guy. And they answer! Always, day or night, someone is there.
I am not a techie. 
English and history were always my passion. In Algebra, I wrote pages of poetry (still amazed I passed). Yet, somehow, I’ve set up and maintain three blogs. I buy and sell on e-Bay, am Linked-In, and visit YouTube. I have friends who use FaceBook and MySpace, and others who Twitter (though not me…not yet…tweet).
Are we better writers than before this techno madness? Who knows? Future generations will decide the quality of our writing. They will choose which books will endure. I do believe that we are better connected than ever. If that helps some struggling romance writer alone in Montana’s mountains to achieve more than she would have before the Internet, isn’t that a good thing?
→ How has technology and the Internet influenced your writing? What do you most enjoy? What do you find most frustrating?
Stringing Beads 
Interesting post.
Imagine if we were still in the middle ages. As women many of us wouldn’t know how to write and if we did we’d be using ink wells, and quill tip pens. And spend hours on just a few pages.
Now we may spend hours on a few pages, but those pages have likely been revised and rehashed and redone a multitude of times. And no messy ink spots either 🙂
I, also, was a student of the Selectra… though not a very good one. As it happened, I stunk at typing in high school and only took it because it was a requisite. At that time, computers were barely in the schools and there was no Windows program. I learned how to write commands on the computer and simple programs. I still can dredge up those long ago commands when going into DOS. When writing groups first took to the new found web I had a cheap computer that I’d bought from someone that had Genesis (I think it was Genesis) as a means of access for the writing groups. I never really found this an easy thing to use. Somewhere in my early career I applied for a job at DeLorme, makers of the Atlas & Gazeteer series. The ladies in the office told the boss “if she can find the keys on the keyboard, hire her.” Thank goodness it didn’t require more. During the course of that job I did learn how to type, very fast! I owe my writing to that job. Thanks for taking me down memory lane.