
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 26, 1993                   TAG: 9309060247
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Monty S. Leitch
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE WRITING/COMPUTING ART

IT USED TO be that when me and the writers I know got together to gossip, carp, ``constructively criticize'' and generally discuss our craft, that's just what we did: We gossiped, carped, ``constructively criticized'' and generally discussed our craft. (You know, ``Maybe I ought to say `ambled into the bar' instead of `strode into the bar.''' ``Did you hear what she got as an advance?'' ``What is a dangling participle, anyway?'' ``Life isn't fair!'')

Now, we talk about our computers.

We talk about disk drives, floppies, RAM, DOS, Macs, batch files, style parameters, WYSIWYG (pronounced ``wizzy-wig'') and ShareWare.

Some of us know what we're talking about. Most of us just like the feel of all those amazing new words. (I tell you, they're even showing up in poems.) The one writer I know who's still using an IBM typewriter goes for another Scotch.

Computers, especially the ones that come loaded with word-processing features, are supposed to make our lives so much easier. And when we're together we pretend like they do.

``I swear,'' we tell each other, ``I don't think I could have written my seventh book if I hadn't had ol' Iago's help.'' (One particularly weird thing about writers is the way in which they tend to inflate the amount of work-completed-to-date. Another, as if there weren't enough: We name our computers, like we've named our cats, after famous lit'ry figures.)

The truth is, there've been days when we'd gladly have taken a sledgehammer to ol' Iago, thousands of bucks be damned; and would have, too, if not for the grim reality that he held the only copy of the past six months of our labor. (``Now, tell me again how do I back-up to a floppy?'' my friend asked me the other weekend. ``I've just about got this whole thesis finished and I don't want to lose it.'')

Now we read that some fanatic in New York has rigged up his computer to write. Not just to act as the tool of the writer (which, in fact, any cheap pencil or ballpoint pen can do), but actually to compose the work itself. Iago as Shakespeare.

Only in the case of this weird guy, it's Iago as Jacqueline Susann.

Scott French, according to the AP story from which I learned these appalling facts, is ``a 43-year-old fan of the late Susann and self-taught computer programmer.'' He's added artificial intelligence to his Apple Macintosh and ended up with ``Just This Once,'' ``a bodice-ripping, megabyte-sized potboiler.'' The story doesn't mention how many millions Random House has already offered.

Is this any different, I'd like to know, from that apocalyptic roomful of monkeys banging away on typewriters until they eventually reproduce all of the works of Shakespeare?

I can tell you from personal experience - corroborated, I'm sure, by hundreds of other writers - that computers do not make the writing life any easier at all. They add enormous complication and expense, much of it for naught. Invariably, the editors who promise that ``disk submissions are accepted'' can't read your format. They then complain as if this were your fault. They tell you how much trouble you've caused them. They send your submission back.

Have they even read your work? They have not. How can we, they whine, when you sent it to us wrong! Life isn't fair.

\ Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.

by CNB