I was born in the 80s and I was 14 in 1994. You can do the math on my age now. (If you can even do math…we Gen X/Y people didn’t get Common Core math…thank goodness…math was already bad enough….)
I grew up writing. I used steno notebooks to draft a 50 page story set in the magical world created by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. For birthdays and Christmas I asked for pens and notebooks. No one thought I was serious about that until the realized I was indeed serious about it. I have boxes full of writing I’ve done over the years.
To this day, while writing my book, I prefer longhand to writing drafts on the computer, though I edit only once I have everything typed up. Fiction is easier for me to write on a computer, but drafting articles and materials for my nonfiction book are better left to pen and paper. To that end, I carry my netbook, a pink Mead notebook, and pink pens with me at all times so I can be ready to write at the drop of a hat.
That said, I wish I had the tools I have now back in 1994. I could have written so much with a super fast netbook, and done so much research with Google, and been inspired by all of the Book and Writing blogs on WordPress.
I have to wonder what life would be like if I’d had those tools all along. Would that stifle or enrich my creativity? (Be sure to read an earlier post I wrote about the demise of cursive and civilization…)
My beloved grandfather bought me a Toshiba Satellite laptop in 1996. I still have it. In fact, I did a ton of writing on it and now that writing is stick there until I can figure out how to extract it. I remember that laptop as a turning point for me, and even though it didn’t connect to the internet it still opened up a new world for me. Until that point, most of my computer experience was from dying over and over again from snake bites and “The Fever” when we were allowed to play Oregon Trail on the school computer lab’s ancient Apple IIEs.
What would I have blogged about in 1994? Today, even 8 year olds text. For a teen in 1994, I’m not sure what would have been important. Carson Daly on MTV’s Total Request Live, perhaps? That was back when MTV was on the verge of phasing out the M in its moniker. Yes, MTV used to play these things called “music videos” all the time.
Regardless, I have to think that technology came at the right time. But it still makes me wonder….What if?
Random Readings 