(Right now his hat is on his head but when he gets to the next village, it'll be at his feet.)
He was a he, all right. 'Cause if he was a she she'd probably be drowned or burned as a witch.
I suppose I don't yearn to have been part of that scene.
All I wanted to do was tell a little tale about a few people fucking . . .
Books were invented and people learned to read. Or maybe it was the other way around. I think monks were involved. Many writers got in trouble for the things they wrote and were banished or imprisoned. They were men. If any of them were women they were probably drowned or burned as witches.
I shoulda been a midwife like my Ma . . .
Still, no fun for the female gender of our species.
Printing presses were invented. More people learned to read. More writers wrote. Women got in on the action, sometimes using male pseudonyms like 'George Eliot' or 'J.K. Rowling.'
Women got to own property and vote and write without getting drowned or burned.
The typewriter was invented. Yay!
Oooooo . . . Hermes! I'll take that one!
The electric typewriter was invented, sometime after electricity came along. Yay! Yay!
Some writers became famous and made lots of money and went on book tours, and some just stayed home and typed stories and books and sold them to publishers. The idea of the "writer in the garret" came into being but most writers didn't really have garrets. The idea of the "starving writer" became popular. It's possible some writers starved. Writers met with other writers in pubs and drank too much and argued a lot. That I know to be true.
The word processor was invented. It could store one or two lines in its memory. Instead of a typing 'ball' it had what was called a daisy wheel. Hiss. Boo! Daisy wheels sucked.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Make it go AWAY!
And then - along came the internet. Computers. Keyboards. Marshall McLuhan's 'Global Village' became a reality.
See? Proof of the Global Village.
Now writers go on virtual tours as well as, or instead of, physical tours. E-publishers have come along and writers create stories and sell them without so much as one piece of paper being involved in the process. Writers all over the world can meet, not in bars but in chat rooms, and argue a lot. They send and get sent electronic mail. Some never meet their editors face-to-face, but they have editors, and publishers, sometimes on another continent.
Writers get to promote themselves.
Some savvy writers love self-promotion. Some probably promote themselves more than they write.
Others, perhaps not particularly technologically proficient, struggle to grasp the concepts of up and down loading, posting pictures, establishing links, networking via websites, blogs, facebook, my space, twitter, chrome, Google plus, Pinterest . . .
I bet it is, too
And then there's all that writing to be done!
Sometimes, a writer will be invited to be a guest on a very popular blogsite, like, say, KD Grace's "The Story Behind the Story,"which is published on Mondays.
Over the weekend, the writer puts together what she hopes will be an interesting article. She chooses an excerpt from her work. She gathers her links together; she organizes pictures. She e-mails the text to her gracious hostess. She finds typos, corrects them and e-mails the text again. She can't help but take one last look at the piece and finds more typos. What time is it in the UK when it's tea time (if we had tea time) in Canada? Shamefaced (but no one can see her face) she sends a third draft.
The writer posts a promo on her blog, facebook, twitter . . . but not on her website because it sucked so bad she trashed it, and not on my space because my space is so yesterday it's not even funny.
On Monday when she gets out of bed the post has already been up for a few hours! Oh boy!
Oh Boy!
Hey, it looks good!
No comments yet? She pounds out an e-mail to her hostess because KD Grace will certainly know why there are no comments yet.
Can you say 'High Maintenance MaddyMo?'
Well, actually, KD Grace does have an answer:
And if it makes you feel any better about
comments, though my site doesn't always get comments, it's #13 in the top 100 of
eBuzzingliterature sites right now and also in the top 100 in the culture
category as well -- based on visits. I get a lot of people contacting me to be
on because they know its so heavily trafficked, so don't worry if you don't get
comments. You're still getting the message out there loud and clear, I promise:)
but it's still early and anyway, you can't rely on comments to tell you how many people actually read the post.The writer relaxes. She has actually promoted her newest story! Won't her editor be proud of her?
Well, she's damn proud of herself. All that technology utilized in the promotion of her piece of work.
God Bless The Internet.
The writer ventures into the great outdoors to forage for food. When she returns, she checks the blog post and sees this: DATABASE ERROR.
WTF!
God Damn the Internet!
She e-mails her charming hostess, who is about to go to bed.
Please Madeline, just let me get some sleep . . .
Right. That damn time zone thing.
The next day, they discover that the host site was hacked. 'Go Daddy' did not go. See the article in The Guardian.
Oh! Did I forget to mention hacking, plagiarism, viruses and flaming?
That's a post for another day. After all, there are stories to be written. Many, many stories have yet to see the artificial light of day.
xoxo Madeline Moore
Picture credits:
folk story teller: thedocent.tjctv.com
drowning witch: kmclafferty-salemwitchtrials.blogspot.com
burning witch: relijournal.com
Hermes typewriter: enotes.com
Daisy wheel: webrealestatetools.com
Marshall McLuhan, global village: mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com
Google is watching you: itthing.com
getting up: marykunzgoldman.com
Painting: Young Woman Going to Bed by Jacob Van Loo (Wikipedia)
Once Upon A Time: Wikipedia or Google or somethin' like that
