I remember when I was in primary school I typed my first story.  I wrote it out carefully, edited it, got my Mum to check it and then sat down carefully and typed it out.  Praying I wouldn’t make a mistake, as our typewriter didn’t have a correct key and a mistake meant you had to re-type the whole page.

I don’t remember how long my story was, maybe five, short, one-page chapters.  I do remember it took me days and days after school to type.

Now in the digital age publishing can be done with a click, and editing is easier.  In the case of web-publishing a work can be edited ever after it is first published.  Now I type a document and go through it a two or three times, but rarely with the same care, my fear of mistakes has relaxed in the confidence that I can always change my work.

I am not sure what this does to the quality of my work, but I know it has intrinsically changed how I work.