I am thirty five years old, I have been a writer since I was nineteen. I was a bit of a late bloomer there owing to a birth defect that messed up my hands, amongst many other thing. I have wanted to be a writer since my earliest childhood memories, but my ability to practice the craft was starkly limited before dictation software got good.
The history of dictation software goes back to 1992, a little company called Visioneer, which originally made scanners, purportedly made the first natural language processing software. the history of this branch of technology, is a bit murky however. The first dictation product that most people heard about was Dragon Dictate. Which appeared and either 1990 or 1992 depending on which source you trust. What is undisputed however is the fact that in 1992 a copy of Dragon Dictate would run you and astounding nine thousand dollars. Which according to the internet would be nearly twenty thousand today. This price would come down, so dramatically in fact That in 2002 my parents were able to buy the competing product something from ibm called viavoice 98 on clearance for my 13th birthday.
The bad thing about viavoice 98 was it required Windows 98, and a pretty beastly computer for the time in order to function correctly. So two years later we were petitioning the school to buy a new computer and and upgrade to the then latest dragon naturally speaking. Given that I was a homeschooled student at the time. Let's just say that the school district was very skeptical of this request.
I needed something more than tools however, that is I needed someone or a community of someone to teach me how to write. There were early attempts of course, I am almost sure some of my early attempts at fanfiction survive to this day. But they are some of the worst written most ungrammatical pieces grace the hallowed halls of the internet. I was more than once accused of being far younger than I was, and even banned from multiple sites. Moderators treated my assertion that I was sixteen with great incredulity upon reading my submissions.
It wasn't until I was nineteen, had regular access to the software, and through the efforts of Dr. Gherkin, and Dr. Murphy. That I was able to spread my wings as a writer, and discover a love for the genre of creative nonfiction. Which I write in most often. Just as this was starting to happen, the time of my life that I refer to as the dark years began. Grief, undiagnosed mental illness and the almost Sisyphean task of completing a college degree with a serious disability conspired to make sure, that I would almost never write for an audience for about a decade. It wasn't until I was 29 that my first published work appeared. So in a way I have only been a writer for six years. Though the desire has been a constant throughout my life, and I have never stopped reaching for that goal.
Another through line in my life, or at least my life since I was a senior in high school has been the presence of John Green in my internet feeds. I followed the original Brotherhood 2.0 with great interest. I was even a member of Your Pants for and all too brief time. Although I don't think I was ever accused of lying about my age and actually being eleven years old on that forum. I have always found the Green brothers to be two of the most erudite internet personalities in existence. But until yesterday I had never read one of John Greene's books to completion.
I have never enjoyed the young adult genre, Even when I was in the target demographic except one book I accidentally picked up when I was Legitimately eleven years old about two teenagers surviving a car crash in a blizzard. I can never remember the title. And I expect that the teacher's aide assigned to read it to me was carefully editing out certain plot elements.
These plot elements so carefully edited out in my youth or what drive me nuts about the young adult genre in general. As a person somewhere on the asexual spectrum, who is also physically disabled I find that sex and romance just don't work for me like the authors describe. I have found better romance for free on kink forums, then spending my precious audible credits or even worse cash on some new york times bestseller.
I was dimly aware the john green had published yet another book in 2021. Naively I assumed it was yet another love story with a side of honest portrayal of illness thrown in. Good for him I thought someone living their best life and sharing the love with the world. Wonderful, but my Para social relationship with the author is nowhere near strong enough to compel me to endure another young adult novel.
Yesterday night I found myself in the middle of a rare confluence where I had a spare audible credit and nothing to do with it. Something about a video one of the Green's had done two weeks ago, ironically enough about Parasocial relationships, made me want to look both of the brothers up and hear at least the samples of what they'd been up to recently. Finding out that john green had written a book of creative nonfiction was a jolt to the system. This is after all my genre, the thing I am trying to become best at. Perhaps I will one day be as good as Sedaris, but with middle age rapidly approaching. That is beginning to resemble a dream, rather than an ambition. I had to read it if only to see how fiction writer of formidable skill, approaches this thing that I love beyond words.
Emotions can also be confluent, that is to say they can mix and combine into rare and even unique forms that are unrecognizable unless you have felt them before. The Anthropocene Reviewed evoked such a confluence in me. It is no wonder john green is a bestselling author, for he weaves together history, current events and memoir so effortlessly that you barely see the seams in the garment. I was at once awestruck, inspired, and at the same time filled with a wistful regret. For all the lost years I have had in my own craft. For this is an essayist at the peak of his powers.
The author's curiosity about the world and compassion for all its inhabitants leak through every page.. The labyrinthine structure of each chapter is nothing short of marvelous. the title of each chapter is just the barest hint of the journey, through time and space the author we'll lead you on. And you don't quite know how he gets from canadian geese, to urban population statistics through the history of lawns and then right back to the goose in under ten minutes of talk time. After having been on one of these circuitous journeys You will never look at the subject under review in the same way again.
Writing as a person with disability, or multiple disabilities if you want to be technical has never been easy. Even with dictation software you have to fight it. everyone is aware of the phenomenon of siri or google getting things wrong even though you clearly spoke the words slowly like you were supposed to. Imagine that every day, in fact imagine having to fight that every minute. I change my sentence structure, simplifying here, complexifying there. All to suit the damned dictation software. my work almost always comes out mangled, never having the rhythm or structure that I envision. Sometimes I am able to beat into submission, as the technology gets better and I become older and more patient, it feels like this is easier.
Visioneer Dragon, and all the rest are now part of Microsoft's artificial intelligence division. One of the leading culprits in burning the planet down. Even independently produced dictation software, which i get for free now must use intellectual property which this ethically dubious entity was instrumental in creating. So on top of everything I deal with as a writer. As a human being I have to worry whether it is ethical for me to have a voice at all.
I need a hefty dose of inspiration, to even try to accommodate these challenges. It would be easy for me just to give up. To withdraw into the silence as I did during those dark times I mentioned. To stay in the fight one must be nourished, and reminded of why one chose this nearly unattainable craft. For providing that nourishment I give The Anthropocene Reviewed five stars.