🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan27.193617.13732@eos.arc.nasa.gov> kyrsten@eos.arc.nasa.gov (Kyrsten Swazey) writes:
>has repeatedly stated that any editor (?) can clean these up
>effortlessly.  Most people use word processors and have spell, if not
>also grammar, checks.  
>Does this reliance upon a computer or someone else hinder ones actual
>talent as a writer?  I believe it does--what else is a writer but
>someone who can express themself in the most immediate and touching way?
>Are they not supposed to be the best at what they claim to do?
>Am i looking at this in the wrong way?
>
>-kyrsten
>

As someone who makes her living as a writer, and has the dubious
pleasure of reading and editing  all sorts of crap from other 
technologically enhanced professional writers, I'd say that the computer,
although a great tool, really doesn't make any difference in
the end with respect to talent.  I mean, it will find your
typos all right, but it won't do the work for you, nor will
it ever make a piece "sing". 

This may sound odd, but I'll rant forth anyway: in hindsight, all
the CW classes I took in university were like my "childhood" as 
a writer.  Don't worry about spelling errors, cried the instructor,
any editor will fix those! (Your prof is not unique.) Grammar
shmammar: let's look at that dialogue!  Now, as a hired gun and 
in my "adulthood", I simply cannot get away with spelling and grammar
errors, or I'll be finished very quickly. I've been forced to become a
meticulous editor of my own work, and that has carried over to
to my unpaid fiction (hope that situation will change!) 

My point?  Use this time to learn ways to put guts into your work.
The technical stuff will follow (if it is required at all).

Tracy