Margaret Serious

Come on, machine…

We’re switching to a new version of WordPress software here at Chicago Now. It will be more secure, and it will do more for us, but for now, it’s worse than trying to play a new piece of music. In some ways, it’s like going from the ways I’ve known for decades to play my cello to the “easier” ways of playing my dad’s old violin. (I play on my cello; I play with the violin.)

I hear and read people telling me it’s easier to play the violin. Well, it takes less pressure to get a sound out of it, that’s true. But it’s as if the notes, one PC key’s width apart on the cello, are suddenly like the tiny groups of icons in the new software.

Like the repetition of scales and notes, repeated paragraphs and headlines (the new software wants to call them titles — er, no) will teach me where things are. So I will be playing with words a bit more in coming weeks to pick up new things to do with the new software. Keeping things concise ought to help… I hope the Writers’ Room takes note of that.

I picked up the habit of calling computers “machine” when I was first getting used to them. Thus, I get stuck and talk to them like characters in old movies used to talk to their cows or cars — only it’s not “Come on, Bessie,” it’s “Come on, machine.”

I don’t like to think of this gizmo as anything more of a character than that. Maybe that will come with another upgrade.

Margaret Serious has a page on Facebook.

Filed under:
Music and language, Writing

Tags:
Imaginary Writers’ Room