Going Pre-Digital

My first novel takes place firmly now.

As such, protagonist Megan can text under the dinner table and show someone right away the boots she wants to buy and Tweet her thoughts fresh from her brain.  Likewise, she tends to respond pretty quickly to the texts she receives from others... and the Instagrams and the Tweets and the status updates.

My new novel, on other hand, takes place in the late 70's.  Its protag, Carrie, either communicates via notes shoved through locker vents and long calls over the house phone, or has to wait to do it in 3D. 

As I write from a pre-digital POV, I'm reliving the way I moved in the world back then.  Thoughts could gel and become refined--or turn in on themselves, morphing into unnecessary worries or obsessions.   There was this mystery about what other people did when they weren't with me, and the potential, likewise, for me to be at least temporarily unknowable.  But there was also the need to tamp down enthusiasm and hold things in, and the inability to share the joyous or funny or sad until after its lustrous immediacy had worn off.

It's weird, to think some level of introspection and silence were necessary aspects of life thirty years ago (and, certainly, before that).  I'm not saying this made life better or worse.  I sometimes think it would've been awesome at sixteen to have Twitter for keeping tabs on my friends, or Google for researching papers or sex questions I'd never ask my mother.  It would've been great to have access to online forums on Dealing with Frenemies or discussions of books I loved.

And yet...I still vividly recall writing stories in my head as I walked home from school, entertaining fantasies about various boys during long family car trips, doodling in waiting rooms, noticing stuff.  I can't tell you what those stories were about or who those boys were or even, exactly, what it was I noticed.  I just remember the feeling around it, the act of simply Being.