Tuesday 3 August 2010

The Trappings of a Writer

When I was about the age my oldest daughter is now, I fell in love with writing paper. There were all sorts of little writing kits in the stores then - note cards, little cardboard folios with matching paper and envelopes, citrus scented paper decorated with oranges and lemons, faux antique paper with Hobby Holly in four different poses. I must have had half a dozen sets at any given time. Oh, and don't even get me started on the blank, fabric-covered "anything books" that turned up a few years later!

Photo by Chris Wightman Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
It seems most of us eschew the old pen & paper methods now. It's rare to use snail mail unless you're sending a package. We email, text & Facebook each other. Writers use a word processor. People keep electronic calendars and to do lists. Some people are even using electronic wedding invitations these days.

But there's no getting away from the trappings, even with our electronic platforms. In fact, maybe it's become more of a distraction than ever. Be honest, have you ever wanted to get some writing done but instead ended up spend an hour browsing through new blog templates and updating your layout so everything looked just right? Have you ever come back a week later, only to redo the whole thing again because the new template is even better than the last one was? I bet you have!

 The trappings of writing are still with us. They are no longer bottles of ink and crisp sheets of paper, but at times they seem almost as tangible. And if they help us get the job done, why complain?

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