Being the practical person that I am, I took typing and shorthand classes in high school alongside my college preparatory courses. After all, these were essential skills for women in the ’60s, and I wanted to make sure I could get a job. I learned to type on a manual typewriter, probably a Royal or a Smith-Corona, and by the time I graduated, I could type over 60 words per minute with 95% accuracy.
Learning to type was a smart decision. Although I did go to college, I left in my junior year to get married. While my husband was in Vietnam, I started my working career as a typist for the DuPont Company in Newark, Delaware. The job came with a good salary, great benefits, and even financial assistance to help me finish my degree; much better than working at McDonalds!
What I didn’t expect was the quirky challenge that came with the job: every document had to be typed using five different colored sheets of paper stacked together. On top was white bond paper with the DuPont header, followed by lemon yellow, mint green, pastel pink, and sky blue. Oh, and don’t forget the carbons in between, making a total of nine sheets! I affectionately call this The DuPont Sandwich.
A typical day at work went like this:
I roll my paper sandwich into the Smith-Corona Electra and begin typing. Click, click, click—my fingers fly across the keys at a steady pace. I swipe the carriage return back to the left, over and over, making excellent progress. This is a piece of cake, I say, mentally patting myself on the back.
Then—the inevitable happens. I make a mistake.
Fixing an error on the DuPont Paper Sandwich is no simple task. Among my arsenal of office supplies sit five bottles of Wite-Out (correcting fluid), one for each paper color: white, lemon yellow, mint green, pastel pink, and sky blue. Without removing the stack of papers from the typewriter, I carefully separate each layer and paint over the mistake with the corresponding color. First the white, then the lemon yellow, mint green, pastel pink, and finally, the sky blue. And in between each layer, I wait for the Wite-Out to dry. Once the process is complete, I carefully roll the pages to the spot where I left off and resume typing, hoping the next error is far down the page.
Later, as a stay-at-home mom, I continued to type, mostly letters—something humans did before email and texting. Mistakes remained a hassle to fix; but, thankfully, I needed only one color of Wite-Out - white. No carbons for me!
Then came the '80s when Apple introduced a home computer called the Macintosh. I was sure I had died and gone to heaven. The machine fixed the mistakes before printing, using something called software! No more Wite-Out and time-consuming corrections!
Image created with DALL-E
In the '80s, my days went like this:
Tap, tap, tap—my fingers dance across the keyboard as I compose my latest letter. The keys barely make a sound, and there is no carriage return to swipe. In fact, my hands never leave the keyboard, which enables me to type even faster. Tap, tap, tap—my steady pace climbs to 97 words per minute with 95% accuracy.
Then—the inevitable happens. I make a mistake.
No problem! I simply press the backspace key, hit delete, retype the correct letter, and move on. Now, this is the life!
The years passed, and I was sure that word processing technology had peaked. Then, 2024 arrived bringing ChatGPT, artificial intelligence or AI for short, to the general public.
Now my days can go something like this:
Scratch, scratch, scratch. On a mint green Post-it Note, I pencil in a few ideas for a time travel novel with my dog, Oreo, as the protagonist. I input the ideas into my favorite AI, and poof! Within seconds, out comes a fully written, grammatically correct 90,000 word novel!
I had prompted the AI make my book sound like Steven King wrote it. But after reading a few pages, I change my mind, "Let's imitate the style of H. G. Wells," I prompt the AI. In seconds, it spits out the new version. "Much better," I say after reading the top page.
I then ask the AI to create an image for the cover, a poem for the introduction, and a video to advertise my book on YouTube. Within minutes, AI has created my New York Times "Best Seller," Oreo's Time Machine: Paws, Portals, and Pandemonium written by Cindy Downes.
Sure, it makes mistakes. I've caught many of its so-called "hallucinations" (a polite way of saying it just makes stuff up). You can't trust it, completely - yet. But soon, it will be more accurate than humans.
No more typing classes. No more paper sandwiches. No more Wite-Out.
Will we even need humans anymore? Only time will tell. . .
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Author's Note: As you have probably guessed, I used exaggeration when describing the process of writing a novel with AI. It takes a bit more effort than that. However, it is possible to create a complete book and it's being done, today.
In answer to the question, "Did you use AI to write this memoir?" No, I did not; however, I did use it to tighten up sentence structure in a few paragraphs and added the word "hallucinations" as suggested by AI. I mostly use AI as a thesaurus, spell check, grammar check, all in one. Not to write memoirs and nonfiction.
I do use AI as a creative tool. It's super fun to get ideas for fictional characters, dialogue, setting and plot. I also use it when teaching for ideas of topics and to create an outline. And because I'm not an artist, I use it to create images, like the one above. As time goes on and AI gets better, I'll probably use it more. For now, it's too unpredictable to depend on.
