Writing is something I've been doing for a long time. I mean, a long time--since I was something like 12 years old. To give you a piece of perspective on this (without giving away my age), I was 12 years old in the 1980s. Since then, a lot of things have changed with regard to writing: word usage (I still by default write *worshipped* and *kidnapped*), the process (mindmapping replaces outlining for me), and most especially the tools (pen/pencil and paper, to typewriter, to text-based computer, to graphical computer).

Since the Liferay documentation team has recently undergone a lot of changes with regard to the way we write documentation, I thought it might be cool to start a blog series on what we've done and the philosophy behind why we've done it, with some personal reflections along the way. I hope you find this interesting. If not, feel free to stop reading and move on to some of the other excellent bloggers here on liferay.com. Much of what follows in this first part is somewhat of a response to a blog entry I saw here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/03/creative-writing-better-pen-longhand.

I was bad at penmanship in grammar school. It was the only subject in which I got Cs and Ds consistently. I struggled through capital letters, chafed through lower case letters, and dragged on cursive. Finally, in the 5th grade, when penmanship was no longer a course, I switched myself to writing in all caps, and have stuck with that from then until now. Why? Because I'd been writing in all caps the longest, and the nature of capital letters means you have to slow down and be more careful, thus producing more legible text. And by the 5th grade, none of my teachers cared or said anything about it.

In 6th grade, we started getting these spelling assignments where you'd have a list of new words to spell, and you had to make up sentences in which the word was used. Rather than produce a bunch of dry, boring sentences (e.g., The patient was paralyzed from the waist down.), I'd make up stories and work the spelling words into these. My teachers loved it. I always got an A+ on my spelling sentences--when my teachers could read them.

Somewhere around this time, I got a plastic "children's" typewriter. I think it was only labeled a children's typewriter because it was cheap plastic: it did have metal hammers and a real ribbon. My mom, who is an office manager for an orthopedic surgeon, was always an excellent touch-typist, and she began teaching me to type. At this point in my life, though, I didn't have much use for the skill, because I couldn't use it much for my school work, and I hadn't gotten the idea yet that I might someday become a writer. Handwriting was everything in school work at this time, and I sucked at it.

Also about this time, rather than typewriters, friends whose families had more money than mine began getting Commodore 64 and Apple II computers. I was incredibly interested in these things, but they were way out of reach for me. I remember the envy I felt in 8th grade when we had these bulletin board projects to do and my friends were able to produce posters and banners strung together on dot-matrix paper, while I was stuck with crappy construction paper and markers.

I don't remember what circumstances brought this about--it was probably getting older and having to start writing papers for school--but in the 7th or 8th grade, my stepfather pulled out for me this old Royal manual typewriter. The thing must've weighed 50 pounds. We lived on the 2nd floor of a two-floor duplex, and I'm sure if I ever dropped it, it would've gone right through the floor and hit our neighbor on the head. It was gun metal gray and had round keys that when you pressed them, went way, way down, slapping a hammer onto a page. At the end of each line a bell would ring, signifying that you needed to finish the word you were working on or hyphenate it. Once you did this, you'd reach up with your left hand and in a smooth motion that my mother demonstrated for me, use a bright, chrome lever to swipe the "platen," or the roller the paper was on, back over to the right to begin a new line. I looked at the machine in awe. Everything about it said to me, "serious writing."  

Coincidentally, sometime before this typewriter appeared, I'd done some of my first bit of creative writing outside of my spelling sentences, just for fun. I'd written a short story that had been inspired by a dream I'd had, and I'd also attempted a magazine based on Mad Magazine which I called Crazy Magazine. Of course, my drawing skills are probably worse than my penmanship skills, so the magazine really had no prayer of going anywhere--but I do remember photocopying it for some friends and handing them out.

The story, though, had some promise, if other people could read it. So I thought maybe I could try my hand at another one--this time, on the typewriter. I was in high school now, and taking a typing class, so if it didn't work out, at least I'd become a faster typist. And so I produced a story called The Deadly System, also loosely based on a dream I'd had (I was having all kinds of weird science-fiction dreams at the time). I stuck this one in a green folder and gave it to a friend of mine--an artist--to read. The story inspired him enough to illustrate the front of the green folder with the main protagonist of the story, which I thought was pretty cool. There are more details here, but they aren't germane to my point.

I was off and running. That story blossomed into several more, and soon I began thinking that I might want to do this writing thing for a living. Upon my high school graduation, I got a PC--a discounted Philips 8088 with a monochrome screen--to take to college with me, where I would be majoring in English. The 386 had just come out, so this machine was already antiquated, but I loved the thing. I did all of my college writing on that PC, in WordStar, where I most appreciated being able to continuously type without have to reach up and swing that platen over at the end of every line. And of course, there was the all-important Backspace key. Right before my senior year, I purchased a 486, and of course I did my writing on that. I have more to say on this subject, but that will have to wait till part two.

The point I want to make here is that for me, the keyboard has always represented serious writing--whether that writing is creative, scholarly, or technical. Writing with a pen always got in my way, and represented extra, tedious work--in other words, re-typing, not to mention deciphering what I wrote--and I thought there were better ways to use my time. I'm happy to write notes in a journal and jot lists, but if I want to do any serious writing, I always sit down at a keyboard. All keyboards are on PCs now, and I definitely have specific thoughts on how best to write on a PC, but they'll have to wait till part two.

If you made it this far, you must have some interest in writing, or in the process of writing. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.