Thank you, Writing Gods

by Maria Geraci

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and as a writer, I have a LOT to be grateful for.

This is how my typical day goes:

1. I crank up my ultra fast coffee maker
2. sit down to my computer (where I catch up on emails, social networking and news of the day)
3. write till I get hungry,
4. nuke something for lunch.

But if I had been writing twenty-five years ago I would have:

1. made coffee in my Mr. Coffee Coffee Pot
2. gone to my desk and sat in front of my electric typewriter (making sure to copy everything later in case I lose my papers), keeping both my dictionary and my thesaurus at finger's length

3. checked my phone's answering machine every couple of hours (in case my editor or agent called)
4. written till I got hungry,
5. nuked something for lunch.






If I had been writing fifty years ago, I would have:

1. made coffee in my nifty percolator
2. gone to my desk and sat in front of my typewriter (making sure to make a carbon copy of all my pages), keeping my dictionary and thesaurus at fingers length
3. written till I got hungry,
4. made myself a sandwich, because heating something up would require too much time (unless it's a can of soup, and who wants that everyday?)

If I had been writing two hundred years ago today, I would have:

1. made myself a cup of tea
2. gone to my desk, hoping that it's situated next to a window so I can get some light, or lit my candle, sharpened my quill, refilled my ink well
3. written till I got hungry (or ran out of paper, or my hand got tired)
4. gone into the kitchen and prayed some food would miraculously appear from somewhere...

How did Jane Austen do it??

So on on this Thanksgiving Eve I'd like to give a big shout out to the Writing Gods for all our wonderful 21st century writing necessities:
lap top computers, track changes, spell check, email, Facebook, Twitter, microwave ovens, take out food, smart phones with unlimited texting and long distance call plans, e-publishing, dictionary.com, Skype, and I could go on.

What writing conveniences are you most grateful for? Anything you could absolutely not live without?


Maria Geraci writes fun, romantic women's fiction. Portland Book Reviews calls her latest release, The Boyfriend of the Month Club, "immensely sexy, immensely satisfying and humorous. " Her next novel, A Girl Like You, will be released August, 2012, by Berkley, Penguin USA. You can connect with her on her website, Facebook or Twitter.