Sunday Snippet: The Writing in the Information Age Edition

It’s been a week, mes amis. I’m working hard on my current WIP–the first book in the Dykemans of River’s Edge series. Liz and I went on a very fruitful, if extremely chilly, writer retreat, where both of us wrote words and did a lot processing. Even more of “what’s the word for this” along with a gesture or a motion. We do that a lot when we’re writing together. Liz is an invaluable resource and I can’t imagine writing a book without her input. We ate some good food, drank a little less wine than usual, and found a fab little place for breakfast right near our hotel. Otherwise, we stuck close to our hotel suite, drank Paris tea, and focused mainly on our writing. It was too dang cold to wander the little town where tourism is the main source of income. January is a pretty dead month there, though, which is why we choose to go then.

For this trip, I took along a couple of yellow legal pads, anticipating that I might be writing part of my story longhand (you know, cursive… a lost art, I’m told) because I’ve been having issues with my laptop overheating. Not only is it my travel computer, it’s now officially my office computer since I dumped my old PC and now use the laptop exclusively. Son and DIL set me with a large-screen monitor that I attach the laptop to when I’m working at home and I love, love having everything in one place. It’s great. However, the overheating thing. The silly thing started getting rocket hot on charging and then crashing now and again. Not good.

I was worried about taking it on retreat, but there wasn’t time to shop for a new one, and besides it presented a knotty problem for Husband to think about while I was away. I worked off battery as long as I could each day, then plugged in, kept track of the how hot the thing felt, unplugged when it got too warm and worked off battery again. It was tiresome and worrisome, but doable (I didn’t have to resort to pencil and legal pad), and when I got home, Husband had his computer repair toolkit waiting.

He and Son had conferred and discussed as engineers are wont to do, and Son had some good diagnostic ideas, which Husband performed, while I alternately panicked and reminded myself to breathe…all would be well. My engineer was on the case. Diagnostics revealed that the fan wasn’t running–like not at all…ever. The fan had died. Thus heat buildup. Sigh.

I’m thinking, “Oh, hell’s bells, couple of hours at the computer store, new laptop–$600 to $800, and a day of setup, which means a day of writing lost.” 

He’s thinking, “Hmmm…new fan. $20 from Amazon with next-day, to-our-door delivery, installs in fifteen minutes, and she’s back in the business.”

For 24 hours, I’m thinking, “What if it doesn’t work?”

In 24 hours, he’s thinking, “Voila, she’s fixed.”

And he was right. The laptop is running like a champ–a cool champ. No more overheating, and I can hear the new fan humming as I type this. I may need a new battery at some point in the future, but right now, I’m all good.

However, this situation brought home to me how dependent I am on technology. I wrote my first novels on legal pads with yellow #2 pencils, then typed them on a small Smith-Corona electric typewriter that was a gift from Husband the second or third year we got married. A few years later, I progressed to a very nice used IBM machine that we bought when the place where I was working part-time was upgrading to desktop computers. A home computer was several years away–word processing was the stuff of sci-fi.

Ah…progress… I do love working on a computer and to be honest, I can’t imagine writing any other way, but I’m giving myself points for taking the legal pads and extra pencils along on retreat. I wonder now if I could’ve still gotten the creative juices flowing if I’d needed to switch my mode of work. I would’ve done it–written my story longhand, but I confess, this old Baby Boomer is very glad she didn’t have to.

BTW: This is release week for Made to Love You! There will be big doings happening here and at the Tule Book Club group on Facebook. Hope you’ll come along for fun and cool prizes.

Gratitude for This Week: Husband, who can fix pretty much anything at all; Son, who is always right at hand when we have a tech issue; great time with friends last night eating Japanese food and then going to a fun show–Yesterday and Today: The Interactive Beatles Experience; a longer walk with pal, Mary around the ‘hood; Del and Beth’s story is moving along–yay! 

Stay safe, stay well (vaccines and masks–they work), keep the faith as we go into the new week, and most of all mes amis, stay grateful,