When I was about 7 years old my father bought an Apple computer. It had a little screen about the size of a book and a massive hard drive with a floppy disk. I was abolustely beside myself.
There was nothing on it except Pac Man and a word processing program. And, well...I was very bad at Pac Man.
So, I'm probably one of the first generation of kids whose love of writing began on a computer.
It's not very romantic. I wasn't trying to find writing time while shivering underneath the covers after a long day on the farm, dipping my pen in ink, all the while stealing peices of paper from my father's office while he was smoking a pipe and working on the accounting books for the general store.
Nope. Pac Man wasn't doing it for me and I wanted to 'play' with this wacko contraption my father brought home one night after work. So I wrote stories.
It occurred to me this morning after learning about a new internet venture with Think It Publishing where kids can type their story and send it out to be published. It occurred to me that with newspapers folding, the publishing industry struggling, and EBooks infultrating the market. That in 1987, I became a writer because of...well...a computer. Food for thought...
what did we play on that computer? i remember it so well. did you have a program to write stories or something? there was something we did together on that computer a lot that was fun...... you and i have always shared the bug to write. i had poems published years ago, but i have yet to invoke the inspiration to write again.. brendan urges me all the time to write a book, as i have always wanted.. i just cannot seem to dig up the subject.. i remember as kids, we rode our bikes and talked about what we wanted to be when we grew up. i wanted to be a teacher and write books in the summer.. before leaving work to be a stay at home mom, i taught kindergarten and pre-k... i have yet to write a book.. ah, that would be heaven! =) Tracy
ReplyDelete