I've been writing on my work laptop (bad, bad Dragon) or my home desktop, but it's a challenge to use two different machines, even with the wonders of technology they have today with USB drives and data cards. If I'm using the laptop, there is often the lure of my email from the day job to distract me, and on the desktop there are chat programs and web site things I can play and learn with for hours!
In December I bot an
Eee PC to use for writing. The little machine came with Linux, and while it's a fine OS, I just didn't want to learn something NEW while I'm supposed to be writing. It's not like I need an excuse to be distracted by technology, but it happens. Often.
Julia Hunter, a fellow writer and friend of mine, turned me on to this little Netbook at the 2008 ECWC and then volunteered her DH to help put the XP OS on it for me. Mr. Tech made it all happen, even adding MS Word so I had no excues not to WRITE, and he turned it over to me today - YEAH!
We hooked up at a local coffee shop and chatted a bit about the technology, and some things I was hoping to do, then we went to work. Julia wrote an article on body language while Mr. Tech grumbled about connecting to the computer in his office on one laptop and while poking around in his Zune list on another! (Yes, he had two!) Together Julia and Mr. Tech bring multitasking to a whole new level.
And I wrote. It's the first time I have committed a whole hour to my current WIP since the end of NaNo 2008 and I was thrilled when the fingers stared to fly over the little keyboard and my ideas were making it onto the page! YEAH!! Mucho thanks to Mr. Tech and Julia for the conversation, inspiration and assistance, I hope we can make a regular coffee shop thing in the future.
I'm happy to have the Weee PC (the current nickname) dedicated to writing. I'll be looking for a new meter for the current WIP, the second in the series, but I have until the end of the month to make the 10,000 works for my January goal, so I think I will begin NOW!
