Last Updated on April 10, 2025 by Tom Kane
Read about how I wanted to be a novelist, but was subverted by the dark side of writing. A telling tale of unrequited love and a desire to write a book. Download and read my free eBooks to see if my journey was worth it.
Technology was a wonderful thing, in the 1970s.
Once upon a time, when the world was young and I was a fresh faced teenager in the 70s, I managed to land a job that introduced me to computers and computing. Yes, in those naive days we called anything that involved a computer in the workplace computing. What a wonderful word that was. It covered all aspects of computer technology. Today we call it IT. You see, straight away, we call it IT doesn’t work as well as we call it computing.
My job was in the stock control department of a large company with 230 retail outlets across the UK. And one of the first things the company did was to install a computer terminal for me to aid me in my job. Note that term, computer terminal, not a PC, because a computer terminal was a science fiction thing made real! This was a thing of beauty and it was big, almost taking up a complete desk. It had a black screen with green text. And the keyboard was big and chunky with coloured keys that did stuff other than just show a green letter or number on the screen.
For weeks people would come into my department and pretend to discuss work issues, while all the time gawping, longingly, at my computer terminal. There was desire in their eyes, and jealousy, but this computer terminal was mine, all mine. Nobody was allowed to use it except me and you had to stand at least three feet away from it. No Touching! Those were my rules.
For an aspiring writer who had scribbled his words on notebooks for so long, it was a wonderful feeling using a keyboard.
And then it hit me. I could write my stories using this computer terminal.
I sat there for a moment, in shock. It was a moment of revelation, a revolutionary thought. I stood up and walked to the computer department down the corridor.
“How does my computer terminal save the information I type in?”
The young lady programmer ( I had no idea what a programmer was but I was so impressed with her credentials I made a beeline for her whenever I had a question) looked me up and down with disdain. Me, a mere mortal, had dared to ask her a technical question. She thumbed behind her and turned away from me.
I stared at the monstrous machine that filled the room, that up until now I had paid little attention to. I realised I would never get the computer in my bedroom, let alone afford to buy one. It was a huge ICL 9000 mainframe computer. I just had no idea on previous visits what the noisy thing in the clean room (that was a tech term too) was. And the large pancakes (yes, that was a technical term in the 70s) of tape, whizzing round, was how data was stored. My mind worked feverishly as I went back to my office.
I had the technology at my fingertips (literally) that would allow me to write and save a story… NO! A novel! My dream of becoming a successful novelist, a vision I had kept in my head for years, was about to become a reality… if only I could find a smaller computer. The dream was alive and kicking in my head, and I would not let it die.
Fast forward to the 1980s and a clever man called Clive Sinclair did something that pushed me further down the road to a writing career. He released an electronic device that looked like a little keyboard, called a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The dream of the personal computer was more alive than ever. I was almost feverish with excitement.
I bought my Sinclair ZX Spectrum and quickly discovered there was no program you could buy, to install on the Spectrum, that allowed me to write ‘My name is…’ let alone write a novel. Not only that, even if I could write a novel I had no means to save it or print it and send to a literary agent. I looked at my old typewriter and at my new Sinclair Spectrum. There had to be a way to write a book using technology. So, I looked into how the Spectrum worked and learned about something called BASIC. It was a high-level programming language, Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. I gritted my teeth and I taught myself BASIC. And I managed to write a software program that allowed me to type ‘This is my name…’ and it worked. I don’t claim to have invented Word Processing, but what I had done was realised I had an affinity for writing software.
By the time I reached my mid-twenties, I was a full time programmer and for years I wrote software and not books. My whole life became a missed opportunity. I had been in the right place, at the right time, to be able to write a book. I owned several PCs and even had a laser printer to print my manuscript, ready to send to a literary agent. But instead, I wrote software. And in some ways I did very well. I wrote, to my knowledge, the first cookery software called Microchef. It never saw the light of day because the publisher went bankrupt. But that taught me something about how important marketing and attractive cover design was.
I wrote software to analyse other people’s software ready for the year 2000 bug. That sold worldwide, even to the US Marine Corps., and it made enough money to set me up as a video editor with the ability to capture, edit and write video to a new medium called DVD. In that way I learned a lot about multimedia.
In the end, I eventually came full circle when the kindle eReader was released. At that point, I realised with my expertise not only could I write fiction, I could publish it as well.
It’s a funny old world, this world of words.
Copyright © Tom Kane April 2025
A great 5-Star historical fiction trilogy
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