Musings from the Mitten

Tools of the trade June 1, 2008

There are many tools that writers (and editors) use regularly. Staples in their bags of tricks are of course, paper, writing implements (many of them), style guides like the AP and Chicago and MLA manuals, correction tape, dictionaries and thesauruses and of course, the phone, computer and printer. Technology has certainly made the life of writers and editors much easier, the Internet allowing us to maintain constant contact (and incessantly check e-mail) and send and receive submissions with greater speed if not ease. It also means that we can network with one another more effectively, supporting one another and nurturing our craft from miles and timezones apart, going beyond the traditional in-person groups and salons. (That’s “salon” in the old sense, not the place where many of us wish we had time for touch-ups and pedicures.) Oh yeah, and we have an outlet for sharing the fruit of our creative juices, that might not be fit for traditional publication in extemporaneous writing on our personal blogs.

As a technogeek of sorts, I find that there are just some things I cannot live without, that go well beyond my arsenal of resources, laptop and DSL. Things like my headset, scanner and the external half-Terabyte hard-drive, which amazingly, between photos and files, will need to be upgraded much sooner than originally anticipated.

So imagine my surprise when my husband relayed a recent experience with a reporter. Scheduled for an interview, he arrived at his appointment. Now being married to a writer, who’s also a stringer for her local paper, he’s got a leg up on many other non-writers who would have been in a similar situation. Knowing that he would need to supply a head shot at the very least, he took it with him, in the event that the staff photographer was not scheduled to be at the interview. Many people would have arrived with physical copies of the photo and other graphic materials that might be needed, something that while is better than a photocopy, I hear from some professional graphic designers that I know, can still be a bit of an annoyance. And since my husband is also a bit of a technogeek, he arrived with his materials not on disk, but on a flash drive.

But back to the crux of his story. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the reporter had forgotten about the appointment and had to reschedule, she was shocked when he presented the flash drive to her. “I’ve never seen one of those before,” she told him. Now being technogeeks, both of us realize that we might be just a tiny bit more aware about “new technology” than others, especially if there’s a generation gap. (Not that flash drives can be described as “new.”) I asked him if that was the case. Nope. The twenty-something reporter was unfamiliar with a little tool of the trade, that as a writer, I find as essential as any of the other supplies that were enumerated at the beginning—the USB 2.0 portable flash drive. They’re pretty nifty little devices, aren’t they?

So, writers … what are your essential tools of the trade? Speak up and chime in by posting a comment.

Copyright © 2008, Erika-Marie S. Geiss