Yearning for a simpler age

While some people struggle to keep up with the latest new technology, Julie Myerson prefers to stay in touch with the real world and just have a word processor that works.

I've written four novels on an Amstrad PCW9512 that's so old that you can't sell them secondhand any more. I just don't care about machinery. All I need is word-processing, cut-and-paste and a screen I can read down. I do a lot of shifting paragraphs around and moving whole pages, and in that sense I think that word processing is wonderful.

It worries me that I'd have never written a novel if I hadn't had the Amstrad. You can really see what you've written and make something look exciting.

I wouldn't be convinced with longhand that what I'd put on the page was anything good, but that's partly because my handwriting just isn't very nice. When you're moving around type, it's that much easier to feel that you're creating something that works.

I've now changed on to a proper computer. Though there are better performances in this computer, I got used to the rhythm of the Amstrad, when it'd chug along saving I'd go and put the kettle on.

The one thing I do prefer having is a fast printer, because the daisy wheel printer would take ages to print out a novel, sometimes a couple of days, and you were constantly resetting it.

There's a superstition I have about doing four novels on the Amstrad, and a reluctance to move on to a different machine. Will I still be able to write on it? I was very fond of the Amstrad.

It was funny when we were thinking about getting a new computer that we went to PC World and the sales assistant just couldn't grasp that all I wanted was a basic word processing package. She was pushing this or that design package, and it was as though she'd never met a customer before who wanted something simple.

I get very bored by technology, and, thinking back, it could be effected by my father's obsessive love of technology. We had a very bad relationship, and to a certain extent technology was a way for my father to avoid people. He loved showing us gadgets and instruments, and it was all he really did with his children. It's ironic that he died before the computer age, which he'd have absolutely loved.

I also think that it's something I can't grasp because I'm not logically minded. I can be trained like a chimp, but I can easily get into a bad habit because I won't look at the manual to find the best, simplest and fastest way of doing something. But, although I'm an idiot about technology, I'm particularly conscious about copying things, and I've never lost anything.

I think that the whole appeal about technology getting faster and enabling you to do more things at a greater speed is terribly overestimated. I've never had a mobile phone, and never would because I don't want people to get hold of me every second of the day. I seclude myself in a little flat where I write and no one knows the phone number. It's bliss to know that the phone isn't going to ring.

I will be giving in to e-mail soon. I do journalism on and off so to be able to e-mail an article rather than faxing and having to print it out first is incredible. And I have novelist friends with whom I'll communicate on e-mail.

The internet appeals to me as a research tool. On the other hand, though, a writer needs to go out. The idea of doing everything on a screen doesn't appeal at all.