Back in the day...
There used to be fog. I remember walking home from high school in thick dense fog. I used to have a little torch, barely a couple of inches in length and it hung on my key-ring that only had one front door key on it. I also remember my ever-watchful relatives ready to report to my parents if I was ever late home. Very strict. There were always consequences.
There used to be snow. Inches and inches of it. So beautiful. Heavy and crunchy and white. During the day if the sun was shining it hurt the eyes. And at night it had an other-worldliness that allowed me to imagine that I didn't live in that dark and dingy house.
The school encouraged most of us girls to learn to type. I didn't want to go and work in an office but it was going to be better than factory work so I obeyed. The old method was to follow the charts and once you put your fingers on the keys of the typewriters, there was an order to follow. Rote learning. It worked.
I became a touch typist. My speed increased and my accuracy improved. I got up to 60 words per minute. Not bad.
I remember tippex. The dry and the liquid. Need I say more?
Then came the word processors. OMG. I hated them and I loved them. As well as faster, my typing got sloppier. However printing, proofing and correcting was so much easier. I remember when I worked for the NHS. The good-feel atmosphere of the office. The smoke that hurt the throat and the noisy clatter of the keyboards as the girls typed up page after page of policies or minutes of meetings.
For my first attempt at a novel I tapped away on an Amstrad. I loved the tidy look of those floppy disks. We had two boxes of them.
Yesterday I had to change names (there are certain literary rules to follow for good practice), for several characters in my not-out-yet ghost novel. Search and replace took no time at all. I love it.
How on earth did Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, et al manage? I imagine them scribbling night after night, and admire them so much for persevering.
