Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Guest Post – I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now! #Pre-historic #Publishing by Sandra Cox
I am sure like me, there have been times when you have wondered what difference might have been made to your life, if your younger self had been gifted with the experience and knowledge you have accumulated over the years.
I invited several friends from the writing community to share their thoughts on this subject which I am sure you will enjoy as much as I did.
Today author Sandra Cox relives those days of manual typewriters and correction fluid that made creating a manuscript so interesting, especially when you needed to correct a paragraph halfway through the book!. Not to mention the snail mail approach to getting a publisher!
I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now! by Sandra Cox
This is a bit of a tough one because I began writing in pre-historic times, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and writers pecked on typewriters. I had no idea computers, software, hardware, printers and emails were waiting in the future.
One morning I woke to birds chirping and mammoths trumpeting and decided I wanted to be a writer. Except for a few well-received essays in high school and a handful of English courses in college, I had absolutely no background in writing. I didn’t even know what a thesaurus was. I just knew I enjoyed creating stories.
The one thing I did have in my empty toolbox was a knowledge of books. I loved reading. I was a voracious reader. And while voracious may not work anymore to describe my reading, I still plow through several books a month. How can anyone not read? But I’m getting off topic. So armed with my ideas I began to write. This was challenging on a couple of levels. Creating a story and getting it on paper.
Today creativity is my major challenge. Then, getting words on paper.
Each typed page needed to be proofed before it left the typewriter and, unless you were a perfect typist which I wasn’t, involved a lot of white paint—correction fluid—from a little bottle called Wite.Out. Wite.Out was a secretary’s and writer’s best friend. Yes, back in the dark ages people were called secretaries instead of admin assists.
