# Back in the old days...



## Potty (Feb 16, 2012)

Something in another thread caught my interest so thought I would expand upon the thought here.

Back before computers were comonplace and typewriters were the norm, how did you ever get a book edited and published? When I write even a short story I have several re-writes and lots of fiddling around with it. But try that on a type writer and you end up re-typing the whole page just to change a single line of text. 

Then the publisher has to transribe the whole thing by hand onto the press making sure no mistakes are made.

How did they ever get anything finished?


----------



## WriterJohnB (Feb 16, 2012)

How did they build the pyramids? A dream and persistence, perhaps.

JohnB


----------



## Foxee (Feb 16, 2012)

WriterJohnB said:


> How did they build the pyramids? A dream and persistence, perhaps.


And lots of slaves.

I'm sure the guys who set the type on the press had some sympathy for the Egyptian slaves at times.


----------



## Bloggsworth (Feb 16, 2012)

Hard work, an almost forgotton commodity...


----------



## The Backward OX (Feb 16, 2012)

Along with all the other problems they faced, compositors needed to learn how to read both backwards and upside-down:


----------



## ppsage (Feb 16, 2012)

Here's a picture of the emendation process. And a nice explaination by T. C. Boyle. There is something to be said for the palimpsest quality of these typewritten drafts, which shows clearly and at a glance, where you came from. I often miss that editing on computer, not every edit is improvement, and if one has to go back to a previous file, comparison is less immediate.


----------



## Potty (Feb 16, 2012)

ppsage said:


> Here's a picture of the emendation process. And a nice explaination by T. C. Boyle. There is something to be said for the palimpsest quality of these typewritten drafts, which shows clearly and at a glance, where you came from. I often miss that editing on computer, not every edit is improvement, and if one has to go back to a previous file, comparison is less immediate.



and a flooble flib to you too!! (too inteligent for me!)


----------



## ppsage (Feb 16, 2012)

Potty said:


> and a flooble flib to you too!! (too inteligent for me!)



Sorry, I forgot.


----------



## Terry D (Feb 17, 2012)

Writing on a typewriter was a great process.  The _clatterty-clack-clack-clatterty-clack-*Ding!*-chunk-ziiiip-clatterty-clack-clack-clack_ sounded like what writing was suppose to be, and watching the stack of finished pages grow was quite rewarding also.  I don't remember if knowing that changes meant re-typing the whole page made me concentrate more on doing it right the first time, or if the re-typing was just a fact of life. 

The ease of editing in a word processing program is a blessing, to be sure and for someone like me who has always been a terrible speller, spell-check has been more important than clean underwear.  I don't have any statistics to back it up, but I believe that the ubiquity of computers and word processing has created a much larger pool of hobby writers.  It's much easier to dash off a few thousand words and call it a story now.  Back in the "old days" it was more of an investment of time and effort.

Today I still print out my first draft so I can edit it by hand.  I like to do that.  I connect with the story in an entirely different way as I start using a pen to scratch, and scribble, and apply proof-reading notations.  To me it's the difference between hand sanding a piece of home-made furniture and using a power sander.  The _feel _is different.


----------



## dale (Feb 17, 2012)

i'd bet that an editors job was a lot more difficult, necessary and time-consuming in those days.
i'm sure the computer has made has made his job a lot easier, as it's become to take a writer so much less
effort to rewrite and correct his own mistakes.


----------

