Would Jane Austen be intimidated by today's technology?

That's what I wondered when I sat down at the computer after putting my son to bed.

When Jane wrote her wonderful novels she didn't have Word or Works on a lightening fast computer. Heck, she didn't even have a typewriter. She had the good ol' pen and paper. Would she be afraid(although it's hard to think of Jane being afraid of anything) to use it and still stick to what she knew?

I did a personal experiment a few months ago when I was in a stage of "All Austen, all the time" where I wrote only by longhand(aka using pen and paper). I thought I'd see what it would be like to write as Jane did. To my amazement I was less intimidated by a blank piece of paper than I was by the blinking cursor on the computer screen. It was easier to write my novel using a pen and paper, although not faster, than using the computer. Granted, it is a little embarrassing and time consuming to count each word to see if I've made my word count goal but it seems to flow better when I don't use the computer. There wasn't the mocking of the blinking cursor and the blank page staring me in the face waiting for words to be added to it. Although, maybe a blank piece of paper could be hard to face too.

I can't say I'll stop using the computer(obviously) but when I'm stuck I need to just pull out the pen and paper and write until my fingers fall off, especially since writing at all has been a challenge for me lately, on the computer or otherwise.

Blogging about blogging or lack there of...

My fiance created a new blog for me. That makes three blogs. Initially, my first thought was "oh, how sweet", my second thought was "why? I already have two that I don't use?" That posed a good question of why don't I blog more often? I think part of the reason I don't blog more than I do is 1)I go blank of what to blog about and 2)I don't want all of the interest knowing all of my business. I know a lot of people blog about what's going on in their lives, sometime down to every detail, and I just can't do it. I like to keep some things private. Writing book reviews and my adventures(or should I say frustrations) of being an aspiring author(who isn't writing) is fun and I want to get back into it but what would I need a third blog for?

Option 1) posting short stories. Bad idea. Anyone reading the blog can copy my idea and get published from it. That's in Aspiring Author 101, don't post your stories onto a public forum or site.

Option 2)I could start a blog about my son and family but that delves a little bit too far into the private catagory so that's a no.

Option 3)A movie review blog. A bit too similar to my book review blog but maybe sometime down the road.

Those are just a few options I'm considering. We'll see what I come up with.

Liz