The Big Plunge

Wrote a check for $110, sending it off to Romance Writer's of America. Hopefully in a week or two I'll be an official member.

Now, to start saving up for the conference...

Updates at work

I feel uncomfortable writing at my office, even when I have permission (due to "downtime" and the nature of our business.) Mostly its the subject matter - romance novels are not exactly work safe. But there's also my need for solitude during writing.

I never had trouble writing essays in class, or on standardized tests, possibly because everyone else is engrossed in their work. But fiction is different. When I'm involved in my writing, I don't want anyone else to see it until I'm ready for them to see it. The process of writing for me is a messy one - drafts, scripts, and sections and chapters are all a muddle until I'm done. I don't mind someone looking after I'm finished (indeed, I want to share it with the universe) but not until I'm ready.

I have my own desk and wide open internet access at my office (giving me access to my drop box), but not my writing software. I am not allowed to use my own laptop without permission, not that I have a working laptop at the moment.

So I am going to have to get in the habit of writing the moment I get home, since it won't happen any other time.

No laptop

I have been awfully quiet.

As I mentioned preciously, my precious netbook developed a sudden and total allergy to Windows sometime in October. (Seriously - all attempts to reinstall XP resulted in blue screens of death.) Rather than discard the perfectly serviceable hardware, I loaded it up with Ubuntu Linux.

Many of my writing programs worked on it - with a little massaging. Dropbox installed without any major issues. yWriter5 took a bit more work and learning some sudo commands, but after an hour or two it was running, although with critical bugs. As I changed from scene to scene, the "scene description" window would shrink to the point where it was unreadable.

But the final nail in the coffin was the discovery that Happy Koala Elf Timesink Fantasy would not play on the machine, because the emulators require more robust hardware. Horrors!

After much painful deliberation, I opted to give it to my husband's 10 year old niece for Christmas. She was thrilled, as she had been nagging her parents for a netbook just like mine for years. Hopefully she won't break it in the first month. (I left Linux running on it for two weeks straight to be sure that it wasn't going to go belly up the day after she received it.)

This means I'm on the prowl for a new laptop. I want something with a significantly larger screen this time, and Windows 7. The netbook is nice because I could chuck it in my purse, but I'm getting spoiled by the 19" monitor at home.

Speaking of monitors, I plan on picking up a second one from a friend. My video card can handle two at a time, and having a second monitor means I can leave my writing stuff up all the time while still doing other things on the first one. I plan to use it as a motivational tool.

New year's resolution: Finish Book #2. Start sending out hard copy query letters. Channel the output I wasted on Christmas fanfiction (22K short story in a month, hitting 4K words one day) into novel writing.