Are you too old to write?

All of us are getting older at the same rate, but some of us started earlier. Today I’d like to mention a few people who continued writing well beyond what many would consider retirement age.

Microsoft reconsidered

Yesterday’s news included the largest drop in personal computer sales since 1994. That’s the largest drop since the days when most people used Windows 3.1 as an operating system, except for a few who had the wonderful new OS/2 Warp (remember that, anyone?).

Seeing the page

For at least 2000 year we have known that people can see close objects  less clearly as they age. For example, the apostle Paul, who was clearly able to both read and write, dictated his letters to a scribe but often signed them in his own hand (1 Corinthians 16:21, Colossians 4:18, 2 Thessalonians 3:17, and Philemon 1:19). Paul was around fifty years old when he wrote these letters, and (in common with most men and women of that age, then and now) probably could not see clearly anything closer than three to six feet from his eyes, unless he wore reading glasses.

Looking at how eBooks are made

These days many books are being published in electronic form, either instead of being printed on paper, or as well as being printed. In this post I’m going to look at some of the formats used for this.

For a book to be useful as an electronic document it has to use a format which is readily available to the potential reading audience. Otherwise the intended audience will not read it. Printed books require nothing but the book itself to be read. Electronic books require some kind of device to make them readable.

Not just Robinson Crusoe

You’ve read Robinson Crusoe, haven’t you? Do you remember who wrote the book? No?

Daniel Defoe. He wrote that one book, a long time ago, and it became a Classic.

That’s the general impression most people have about the man who wrote Robinson Crusoe. But it’s totally misleading. Daniel Defoe, who was born in about 1660 and died in April 1731, was probably one of the most prolific writers of his day. He wrote at least seven novels, and a total of several hundred published works of all kinds. Robinson Crusoe was his first novel, published in 1719, and may have been the first novel written and published in English. Defoe had a very colorful life, as a businessman, a convict, a spy, and a political campaigner.