Getting technical

No matter what non-scribblers may think, writing is a technical occupation.  You don't just dream up characters and storylines and nurture them into a novel.  Before that happens, you have to get to grips with the tools of the trade.

I suspect as long as people have been writing, there have been writers muttering dark imprecations about those tools.  There must have been stone tablets that shattered just as the chisel was reaching the good bit.  For every breathtakingly illustrated medieval bible, there must have been countless sheets of screwed up vellum lobbed into the fire by a frustrated monk.  The advent of the printing press must have created so many new ways for things to go wrong that Caxton must have been cursed in the same way as a Windows fatal error that occurs just as you were about to save that crucial file.

Which brings me (clumsily) up to date: the writer's relationship with modern technology.  Now you may have noticed by the paucity of illustration and zippy effects on this blog that I am not the techiest of people.  For all their shiny futuristic glamour, computers are merely tools, albeit less straightforward than a hammer, sometimes to the point where I am tempted to juxtapose the two.  But when you dip a toe or ten in the chilly waters of self-publishing, you need to get to grips not only with word processing but with creating a cover image (OK, I ducked that - thanks Graham!), maintaining an online presence and grappling with uploads and downloads, all the time suspecting something somewhere has gone arwy (I'm yet to receive any royalties from Amazon, not sure if that's because I haven't earned enough or because I did something wrong when I put the book up for sale).

Regular writers have publishers to worry about that sort of thing.  When you're a one (wo)man band it can start to creep in and suck out the time and enthusiasm you were saving for the actual writing.

So what I think I need is something to take the next book out of my head and drop it straight into yours, for a small fee of course.  I'll see what I can dream up.

PS Looking for Buttons will be FREE from Amazon this Valentine's Day.  That's got to be better than some wilting roses and an overpriced box of chocolates.