Sandra's Computer Woes

Stand back, because I'm about to reveal my age. Are you ready for this? I am old enough to remember writing by hand. Yes, with a thing called a pencil. No keyboards, no monitors, just pencils and paper.

That's how I wrote my very first Presents. In longhand, on pads of yellow lined paper. Then I typed that manuscript, all 250 pages of it, on my trusty IBM Selectric typewriter.

Harlequin Presents bought the book.

I took my advance check and sank it into a computer. It was a Franklin, it had (gasp) 64 megs of memory... and I didn't have the slightest idea how to use it. Everyone in my family had suggestions but nobody knew anything more than I did so, finally, I shut my office door and warned them that to open that door was to court disaster. After a week of hell, I'd learned enough to begin writing my second book.

Over the years, I bought new computers. Many new computers, at first because I fell in love with the technology and then for less happy reasons, like fried motherboards or dead hard drives.

Last week, we had a death in our computer family. The corpse was my husband's desktop unit. It was time to replace it.

This was the plan: I'd give him my desktop computer and buy myself a new laptop that I could use when we travel and I could also plug into my big flat-screen monitor and my ergonomic keyboard for use at my desk. (I already have a laptop but that's a whole other story.) Sounds simple, right?

Sigh.

I spent days and nights, literally, researching what to buy. The brand I'd relied on in the past was now getting awful reviews, including from me. The only good news was that I'd just finished writing my latest Presents, so I'd have a couple of weeks in which to select a new computer, order it, receive it, set it up...

Anyway, I finally placed my order last night.
The new computer is gorgeous. It has zillions of bells and whistles. I love it... Well, I hope that I'll love it. Despite its great reviews, its good looks, its excellent components, its hefty price-tag, I won't know if I made the right choice until it arrives. Or until I start using it. Or until it either becomes my steadfast friend or my worst enemy and yes, I had one computer that was precisely that.

I have to admit, sometimes I'm tempted to go back to pencils. Or typewriters. Or further back, maybe, to papyrus or stone..

Hmm. I went through erasers like crazy when I wrote in pencil. I bought White-Out three bottles at a time when I used a typewriter. Didn't anybody ever make a mistake, chiseling on stone??? What happened then, or don't I want to know?

Anyway, I'll let you know how things go on my own blog where I'll also keep you updated about my books. Oh, and right now, if you go there you'll see that I'm giving away $1.00 (one dollar) off coupons (a very, very limited number of them) as well as gorgeous bookmarks. Why not drop by and say 'hello?'

Sandra