The clacking of keys fills my room as I busily type away at the document opened in front of me. When the typing finally comes to an end I pause and glance at the screen, reviewing what I’ve put down. When I am at last satisfied I move over to the chat window on the right hand side and type two letters. YT.
I shift to my facebook before looking back. Another cursor moves down the page before words start appearing. I sit still as I watch them go. I nod my head at what they say and watch as the ghost like writing stops. A message appears in the chat. YT
I quickly move back to writing, eager to finish what has been going on for about an hour.
This is merely a demonstration of the importance of technology to my writing. One of the biggest ways it’s impacted me is allowing me to co-write a novel with a friend across the world. Thanks to google docs (I believe it’s called Google drive now) it has been easy to write a novel with someone else. The two of us simply switch back and forth indicating this with a “Your Turn” (or YT) in the chat box. With such a helpful tool, writing a novel was accomplished in a matter of months.
Technology is helpful in so many ways. It allows speed people never had in previous generations. From self-publishing, laptops, e-books, internet journalism and more, writing has become a completely new art in the last fifty years.
Then again as I flip back and forth between my facebook and this blog, I can’t help but see some negative aspects of technology as well. From distractions to less time spent editing, there are many problems that the come with the progress in the ways we write.
How do we sort out the good from the bad? Anyone can make a blog. Anyone can get their voice out. For many writers this is something that shows a lot of hope. For others there is a feeling of being drowned in a sea of other writers.
As time goes on our lives as writers will only continue to change. It is impossible to say what writing will be like in the next few decades. There are many marvels to the increasing tools for writers and many negatives as well.
A Cup of English Tea 
That’s interesting, I’ve never thought of utilizing Google Drive to co-author a book, but it makes perfect sense. I totally agree that the presence of technology has made it much easier to spread one’s work and get it out there. Even now with blogging, writing is vastly different than it was even a few years ago.
That is a very cool idea to co-author a novel over the internet! That sounds like something I would enjoy, although trying to find a friend with whom I would want to co-write might be a challenge. I know what you mean about the distractions. I sometimes find myself wishing that computers didn’t exist so I could just write on paper and have it be normal.