I'm typing this on my husband's desktop computer. Upstairs I have a brand-new Macintosh laptop that I bought yesterday and haven't set up yet. It's beautiful and I love it, but I have a deadline on Friday and I will send this story in on that day if it kills me. I couldn't resist taking the new machine out of the box, but I'm not going to start working on it until I know I have a few hours to devote to being my own techie. ("Plug and play" only means "easier than a non-Mac," not "foolproof.") Likely this will be tomorrow, since I'm within a few hundred words, several phone calls (fact-checking, doncha know), and another several jokes of really being done with this story.

Tomorrow's also a deadline day, since the husband and I start writing workshops then (his in the morning, and mine in the afternoon). Fortunately, I'm only taking a chapter from my long-neglected novel in with me, and merely had to worry about retrieving it from my old hard drive and printing it out. All week, with my computer broken and lots of writing to do, we've been sharing his office. In a way it's been fun, like summer camp for writers.

It's a terrible way to earn a living, though. If only I could do something, like cable installations, that people are willing to pay money for. I've been practicing for having children: "you'll major in English over my dead body!" Hm. Maybe that's wrong: it should be reverse psychology. How about, "your father and I will be very disappointed if you go into a lucrative career."

We'll try that one.

"Goodnight sweet ladies, goodnight."

Posted by: Attila at 01:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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