My first typewriter was a Brother. They should have called it a “bother” because that’s what it was every time I made a typing mistake and was forced to correct it using a brush stroke from a bottle of whiteout. And I spent a fortune on bottles of whiteout.
Typewriters
In Junior High I was assigned a creative essay on the Vietnam War and used my bother of a Brother to produce a “Diary of a US Marine.” Why a Marine would use a typewriter in the jungles of Vietnam is beyond me now but that escaped my 13-year-old’s logic. The last unfinished page of the diary was smeared with red liquid, symbolizing the death of the diary keeper.
As clunky as it may sound, it was a fun exercise, and I still have the diary tucked away in a tote in our cold cellar.
How times have changed.
Technology
Now I navigate the digital world of a WordPress blogsite, Substack, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Threads, and a Mailchimp newsletter that needs feeding twice a week. Thank God there is no whiteout needed for digital.
My blogsite function is totally dependent on a paid web designer. Years ago, I taught a seminar at the Inscribe Writers Conference on using a blogsite. Maybe you were there. The first enquiry during the Q&A session was how did I build my blogsite. When I explained that I hired a web designer, the response was, “O, you can afford a guy.”
If you’re going to write, you might as well be read.
That doesn’t mean writing for applause, chasing clicks, or hoping to go viral. It means remembering that words are meant to travel.
What better way to travel to readers than through free, social media platforms. Posting on social media is an invitation: Here’s something I’ve been thinking about. Perhaps it will make you think, too.
I travel for free on Substack, Linkedin, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook.
My wife loves the digital world of Kindle, or I should say, MY digital world. My library doesn’t need to be dusted now that most of my books are on Kindle. Gone are the floor to ceiling bookshelves, traded in for a simple, dust free, iPad screen.
I'm OK with screens. I can take my entire library with me to Ukraine on my iPad. My eyes are a different story, requiring reading glasses and regular screen breaks to give them a rest.
Here's to a celebration of thinking, writing, and sharing.
You can find me at REVwords and on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Substack
Some of my published books are listed on www.Amazon.ca.
