Thursday, May 3, 2012

The Necessities of Writing

A couple of weeks ago I made a post about what I use as a writer to help me do what I need to do.  Music and movies, maybe a quiet place where I can concentrate, those were the kinds of things that every writer has that not everyone understands (including other writers).  Today, though, I'm going to talk about something that every writer needs in order for their craft to work.  A computer.

I know, you're thinking that some people write by hand.  You would be right.  There are some out there that do write out their manuscripts by hand.  I personally think they're crazy (though many people think that I'm crazy writing 300k words in a month, so I guess it's more in the eye of the beholder.)  The fact of the matter, though, is that we're no longer living in a day when books are hand written and bound.  Whether writers like to write out their first draft by hand or not, that manuscript does eventually need to make it's way into the computer.

So what happens when your computer breaks down?

Last night I got home from a night out with friends, determined to either do more editing or writing a blog post.  (Yeah, yeah, okay.  I was actually going to procrastinate.  Don't hold it against me.)  Anyway, I turned on the computer, checked out facebook...and my computer crashed.  I tried to wait it out, but nothing was working, and I eventually had to shut the computer down.  When it restarted, windows refused to load.  This continued on for an hour!  One hour of turning off and on my computer trying to make it actually work.  An hour when I could have been editing (or possibly procrastinating.)

I'm sure you can all imagine that I was rather pissed.  A few angry texts were sent out and I swore to my computer that all the money I had set aside was going into buying a new laptop, cause I have had it!

Truthfully, I will probably end up buying a new computer.  I was already planning on buying one next month, however an hour long computer crash isn't something that I can afford on a regular basis.  I spend a lot of time on my computer, and it's not always about facebook or twitter.  Most of the time I'm writing or editing, or even planning.  I do most of that on the computer, and if the one I'm using is going to be unreliable, then I have to shell out the money to replace it. 

I've never been truly serious about anything like I have been with writing.  I think most of my family is surprised that I've actually kept up with it.  I've told them so many ideas for what I was going to do with my life, but it's never lasted even a year.  I always change my mind, or decide that it was a stupid idea in the first place.  Now that I am, though, I can't just neglect the things I need in order to be successful in the writing industry.

So this weekend I will be going out and seeing what laptops are available.  I'll be bringing the tech savvy boyfriend with me so that I'm not buying something that's going to crap out on me as quickly as this one did.  Who knows, I may be the proud owner of a shiny new laptop the next time I'm posting on this blog.  while that would make me happy, it would probably make my bank account not so happy.

But my bank account can complain all it wants to, it's going to fall on deaf ears.  I need reliable tools in order to accomplish my goal.  I can only hope that I find a computer that is in my price range but is still better than this one!


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