Do you remember these?

Typewriters. 

Do you remember using them? 

At the risk of sounding ridiculously pretentious, I wrote my first novel manuscript on a typewriter when I was fifteen.  The main character was Vivian and she was adopted by a wealthy family in the Antebellum South.  In the opening scene, Vivian is escaping her abusive father, driving a carriage with two horses galloping out of control. She is rescued by a handsome man who boldly gallops alongside the carriage on his horse and jumps into the carriage to reign in the horses. Or maybe the carriage crashes. I don't remember exactly. It's been a long time. 

Somewhere in the melee, Vivian is knocked unconscious and the handsome man takes her back to his parents' mansion. She is allowed to live there once she recuperates from her injury given that her dad is an abusive drunk.  

I can't remember the name of the handsome man. His sister was jealous of Vivian, who always got the attention at balls and barbecues because Vivian was prettier than the sister. The sister referred to Vivian as "Vivi," knowing that Vivian didn't like the nickname. That much I remember about this story. 

I named the heroine Vivian after Vivian Lee, who played Scarlett O'Hara in the 1939 Gone With the Wind movie.

Eventually Vivian and the handsome, wealthy man fall in love despite their different backgrounds and live happily ever after like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett.

During a moment of disgust, I chucked the neatly typed manuscript in the trash. It deserved it.

Later in high school, I progressed from a typewriter to a word processor, which was a half typewriter and half computer combined into one.  (View a picture of one here. This being the late '80s when personal computers as we know them today not being readily accessible. The concept of Windows was a rumor when I learned DOS language on a Mac. They weren't called Apple back in my day, people.)

Anyway, I wrote sappy short stories on that Brother word processor. The stories usually involved a misunderstood heroine, searching for true love and finding it in a leather jacket wearing, motorcycle driving bad boy who was really a good boy.   

It was bad. As it should be. I was a teenager, not yet knowing who I was as a person, let alone a writer. It took me years to find my own voice and even then I still struggled. 

All along, I had the elements of the romance genre in my short stories.  I always knew that I wanted to be a writer.  I didn't always take myself seriously, though, dismissing what I wrote as frivolous the way some people dismiss the romance genre in general, saying it's not "real writing" or it's hack writing. The genre doesn't have the same respect as literary fiction, which is ridiculous. Good writing is good writing in any genre.