A Brief-ish Personal Introduction (Pt 1)

When I first decided to 'be' a writer I thought it would be easy. I mean, really, what could be hard about sitting at a desk bashing away on a keyboard for hours on end? It took me about five minutes (that long, I can hear you cry!) to realise how naive I was.

First of all I realised I couldn't just 'sit down', never mind write. The room had to be at just the right temperature, with just the right amount of light for a start. It also had to be the right size. There was something about large rooms I found very unconducive to writing - smaller was better as far as the me of all those years ago was concerned. I can clearly remember my first 'space' ; my bedroom, with the typewriter (a Brother 9000, I think) balanced on top of my guitar amp and me perched on the edge of my bed, hunched over like a snail.

Uncomfortable as it sounds (and, in practise, was) I actually pretty productive. Not published, or even widely read, but I could churn out a couple of thousand words a night, including thirty odd pages of my first attempt at a novel.

'The Blue Light', whatever became of you?

After a few weeks I began to get pains in my back and shoulders so decided to try writing at the kitchen table. Big mistake! Apart from being environmentally wrong (and too big) it was also a main thoroughfayre in our house, and it is impossible to do anything with family members and visitors peering over your shoulder in mid-sentence.

So, back upstairs it was, and I managed to fashion together a sort of desk which was reasonably ergonomic and that suited me just dandy.

Then I discovered a typewriter, electric and with some pretty snazzy built-in features as it was, just wasn't good enough for THIS writer! I needed a computer. At the time (late 80s) they were all over the TV and I really, really hankered after a word processor. Just think how much more productive I would be if I had one of those...my word count would multiply ten-fold!

Using the plain old typewriter became a chore...every word committed directly to paper was begrudged. My words deserved to be converted into binary code and stored on disk!

The inevitable happened; I fell out of love with writing. I got to the end of the ribbon I was using and packed the typewriter away at the back of the cupboard (where it sits to this day) telling myself it would one day be on display in a museum dedicated to great authors of the 20th century.

It took me years to get a computer. A serious one I mean. I had a Sinclair Spectrum for years (and even tried the word processor which was available for that - TasWord) and Christmas 1991 saw a Commodore Amiga 500+ land in my stocking, but they were for playing games on! I mean, Commodore were trumpeting the Amiga as a business machine but they were marketing it at the time in a 'Cartoon Pack' with games like 'Bart Simpson vs The Space Mutants' and 'Captain Eco'. I did eventually get round to using it for computer art, but not before wasting far too much time playing Lemmings and Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix.

I should say that during this time I was still writing stuff, but it was literally notebooks full of scribbles and doodles. Looking back through some of these now it's interesting to note just how neat and cursive my handwriting was. Oh, the youthful exuberance!

Roll on to the mid-90s and, thanks to getting a place at university and the accompanying grant and loan I was finally able to buy myself a PC. I can see it now : a VTech branded Intel 486/DX66 processor with 4 megabytes of RAM, a 50 meg hard drive, 4xspeed CD-ROM and a 14inch CRT monitor. Best of all it came with Lotus Office installed which included a word processor!

For about a month I was on it every spare minute of the day. I didn't have internet access (more of this later) so there were no distractions and, in the UK at least, PC compatible games were pretty hard to come by (and they were usually pretty crappy anyway).

Then the itch started again. This Lotus software isn't the market leader. All the magazines talk about Microsoft Word. I want Microsoft Word. I MUST HAVE MICROSOFT WORD!

It just so happened that a friend of mine had a copy of Microsoft Office that he didn't need so he gave it to me...all 26 3.5inch disks and six thick printed manuals of it. The box took up half a shelf.

Word was duelly installed and, after poking about in the other programs (Excel - yuck, it's all maths, and Access - oh great, I'm going to catalogue my CD collection...but whats the point, I know what I've got) I set about practising my craft in the Rolls Royce of writing environments.

Itch itch itch.

Editing on screen was all well and good but I needed hard copies. I needed a printer, but not just any old printer...I needed a colour inkjet printer! That took up the second portion of my student loan, costing something like 350UKP.

Finally, in 1997, I was ready (by this time I had 'borrowed' the kitchen table and put it in my bedroom so no more hunching over a guitar amp). Everything was prepared. The blockbusters would just roll out of me, unbound and unchecked.

For the first time in my life I had writer's block. Not one single fresh idea would come into my head. I dug out an old handwritten script and committed that to everlasting .doc status, and in my more desperate moments I would copy-type pages of Stephen King novels just to see words on my screen. The fear of a blank screen became almost tangible and I would invent excuses so as not have to switch the computer on that night.

So, back to scribbling in notebooks and only using the computer to produce essays and assignments for university (some of which were works of art, if I say so myself - especially the one about Star Trek but I digress).

Oh, is that the time! We seem to have arrived at 1999 which is as good a place as any to make a comfort stop. Please come back soon to read the conclusion of this tale...