Thankful Thanksgiving Day 15: Word Processors

Today I am thankful for word processors. I couldn’t be a writer without them. First of all, my hand writing sucks. But beyond that, the idea of writing everything out on paper, scratching stuff out and then completely redoing it from scratch…No thanks. Even with a typewriter that would be a horrendous chore.

All of the wonderful little short cuts in word processors save ages of time. Find/Replace, Copy/Paste, etc all serve to make corrections and improvements possible. I can’t imagine writing a novel, or even a blog post, without the delete button.

Now, the ease of typing does cause things to become sloppier, hence the prevalence of internet/gamer slang and the genuine fear that anyone born this millenium does not actually know how to spell. But correcting those mistakes is pretty easy. Assuming your message is still clear, I actually don’t mind most typing errors in simple emails or in chats (though I have a threshold beyond which I think you’re an idiot).

I’ve spent the last few days going over the comments and edits my editor made to my novel. There were lots, but most of them it was a simple matter of “Accept Change”. I can’t imagine editing 110,000 word novel without a word processor.