Digital Age

Something which made me think during the festival was how everyone was being called writers. the term was a little funny really. The more I though about it the stranger I thought it. I didn't want to ask it out loud for fear of looking a little silly but I wondered. How many of these people actually write? I know I type, a lot. I barely ever write. Well what would be call them if we did not call them writers?

Authors

Creators

Artists

I liked all of the alternate names I thought of. Creators was my favourite (note at this point I had written the rest of the blog post and my computer decided to automatically shut down and update, I lost all my work). Sigh.

I think that the term creator is a better one for the age we live in. The Digital Age. How much difference it must make to the life of 'writer'. What would it affect?

Celebrity status? Well how much easier would it be to advertise and publicise a writer? They all have their own websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and online presence. I didn't know much about the writers at the Mildura Writers Festival but within minutes I could learn everything I needed to know about them and more. I could see their work online in books that had been published out in the big wide web. I went from not knowing who Les Murray was to being one of his biggest fans in only an afternoon. How cool is that?

Online publishing...how much further their work can go thanks to technology. It could be as simple as purchasing the actual book off goodreads but you could also buy a digital copy for less the price, take it anywhere with you, it never gets water damaged, creased or crushed and you can read it off several different devices. I own very few books with pages that you turn. I have read countless amounts of books on my Kindle, my phone, my tablet and my computer. Also, thanks to online publishing, it doesn't matter where in the world you are...you can buy and read an author's work. Someone could buy and read the book in France at the same time as someone in Mexico. How cool is that?

What about the actual process of writing the book. Again, you could add to it anywhere anytime as long as it's backed up on Google drive, One drive or the iCloud. You don't lose it usually because it automatically saves changes. You can track changes made in different colours to see your progress. You can cut and paste whole sections to add new sections in. It cannot be burnt or destroyed in flood or fire. Your kids can't pull out the draft and throw the pages around and get them all mixed up. I wonder if authors feel the same way about this as me? I wonder how many people still actually write their manuscripts? You can email sections of your book to people half way around the world for them to edit and revise it to then send it back without losing even a day. How cool is that?