By ‘writing’ I mean stringing words together in a creative fashion as a hobby or career.
We don’t write any more, we type (well most of us do) so what’s an equally cool sounding word for the task of constructing arrays of words?
‘typing’ is too basic and limited. It makes it sound not like a creative act but like a task. “I enjoy typing” doesn’t have the same ring as “I enjoy writing”
I am being deliberately unspecific. Because I am looking for a word that describes the pure act of making sentences and paragraphs.
Because I like doing it. As is probably evident by my post count and rate.
It’s “writing.” The word “write” is not limited to drawing characters with a pen. For example, it wouldn’t sound odd for me to pick up a new copy of Huckleberry Finn and say “Mark Twain wrote this book,” even though Mark Twain obviously didn’t take his pen and write down the words in the pages of that particular book.
So I guess the meaning of ‘writing’ has changed (even in the dictionaries)
But surely it’s original meaning was drawing characters with a pen?
“Mark Twain wrote this book” would probably mean Mark Twain did originally use a pen to draw characters. And those were put into print.
Anyway. It’s good to know ‘writing’ is still a perfectly valid word for what it is that I enjoy doing. even though I am not using a pen to do it.
I suppose it makes more sense to change the meaning of an existing word as technology changes than to come up with a new word. It just feels slightly wrong to say “I enjoy writing” when I hardly ever write things with a pen.
You do see “author” used as a verb sometimes, mainly in the past tense. I still like “write” the best. The definition changed long ago to reflect the lack of penmanship, and none of the synonyms I know encapsulate all the details of the process.