I didn’t set out to have pink electronics. Strictly speaking, the notebook, made of paper, is not electronic, but it does live the same tray with pink laptop, pink tablet, pink camera case (camera itself is silver, but case, not pictured, is pink. Okay, the jump drive stuck into the new laptop is orange (conference freebie, much appreciated) and the mini-mouse that’s out of frame is metallic red. Pink and orange fit under the red umbrella (yep, artist’s kids learn color theory early on; thanks, Dad.) This post isn’t about pink, though.

New laptop has joined the family, an HP stream. She’s light, she’s portable, she swims in the big blue sleeve that I always had to fit the old laptop into, and her new sleeve, when I find it, may very well be pink, though a skull or two couldn’t hurt. We’re still getting acquainted, she and I, and it’s a different experience from having to juggle a bigger laptop with an external keyboard. She starts and shuts down without a complaint, has a battery that isn’t dead, is, so far, bug-free, and despite the fact that we’ve been working together for less than a week (she came home on Wednesday) I think we’re getting along fairly well.

Not that there aren’t adjustments. She doesn’t have a CD drive, for one thing, which had me blinking in surprise for a moment. Time does move on, and so does technology. That’s fine. I can still Sim on the old laptop (though I did accidentally delete a huge chunk of custom content and then empty the recycle bin before I’d noticed what I’d done) and I have the DVD player for watching movies. I’m good there. What gave me a slight case of the heebie-jeebies was the lack of Word. Eep.

I’ve written in Word forever, ever since WordPerfect stopped being a thing. The mere thought of writing without it brought some uncertainty, but now, less than a week later, I can safely say I have almost entirely switched to Scrivener, the same program that had me turn off the tutorial after two minutes because it was too scary and complicated. Go figure.

What I like about Scrivener is that I can work on each scene in its own document, and still have them be part of the whole. Discovering, through my own poking around, the document note and sratch pad features, was something akin to magic. Finally, a screen divided the way I blabber in my head, where I can look at what I blorched out and make notes about what works and what doesn’t. I didn’t know I needed that until I got it, and now the thought of working without it makes me nervous. I love that I can label and color code text so that I can see at a glance what’s a draft (and what number,) what’s notes, where the character notes are, etc. So far, I have not used any pink backgrounds for full screen mode, but that all depends on the individual story, so it may yet happen.

I’d been feeling weary at the thought of migrating all of my Word files over to new laptop, and to Scrivener, which was a sign. I didn’t. Only active projects made it over, which brings a sense of relief. I don’t have to haul the corpses of dead novels around while I’m tending the new babies. It’s easier to focus, especially for my maximalist magpie brain (and the backgrounds in full screen are paradise for those of us who need something besides a blank page to look at.) The others are still there, waiting for their turns, and it’s okay if some of them don’t get turns after all. Not every story start makes it all the way, and some were started by people I no longer am. That happens.

Learning a new computer, and new writing software, goes a long way towards relearning how to write. With learning how I write now.  We learn a lot about ourselves when we pack to move, be it physically or virtually . That’s certainly true here. Spotify had to go on this computer; that was one of the first things, as my playlists are part of the process. Pinterest, too, for the inspiration boards. Sims are probably not coming to this laptop, as it’s for work, but a new/used gaming computer can come later. Photoshop Elements, too, is staying on the old computer (again, no CD drive, so that took the decision out of my hands.)

This one is for writing. This is where I will rip the guts out of what I have on Her Last First Kiss and rebuild it because now I have the technology and know the story better. This machine, not puddle jumping from semifunctioning laptop to semifunctioning desktop via flash drive, is where the novella will be written and two voices smoothed into one. She’s a lean, mean, romance writing machine, and that feels right. Writing is my happy place. I want to concentrate on that and do it my way. Much easier on body and brain than switching around and making do. Getting to know a new computer helps me to better know my own process. What do I naturally do with a fresh start? Sometimes I surprise myself, and that’s a good thing

I’d had a plan for this entry, and had hoped to post another video blog, which will happen, but not today. After yesterday’s chaos, which Real Life Romance hero summed up as a “crawl underneath the covers head first and pretend The Walking Dead is real” day, I was looking forward to getting everyone off to work, so I could get down to work. Blog, scene due to collaborator, desperately yearning to get out plot board and fix my historical outline, long-neglected emails that have had only a series of “I’ll get to you ASAP” promises because domestic tornadoes keep swiping through, but today…today was going to be The Day To Get Stuff Done. Laughing yet?

Anyone who has been a caregiver long enough knows the “we’re going to the hospital” feel in the air. Easier trip this time than most, quickly seen, quickly sent home, well medicated, hospital-goer now resting and fed, me settled in with Housemate’s computer (aka the family computer until we can remedy the situation) and a cup of tea, because what else would one be having on the last day of June? Ready to write, but what? It’s another unexpected turn in the road, to be home this early on a hospital day, a very good thing, but goes to show how quickly we can become accustomed to routines, even stressful ones.

I’ve told Real Life Romance Hero that I don’t know if I’m going to know what to do with myself when I’m working on a computer where everything works, nothing has to be switched around, and I do not have to rest the keyboard on my :ahem: self when I need to access the touchpad. Actually write books and posts, one would hope. At least that’s the plan, but if I’ve learned one thing about plans, it’s that an old favorite Dutch proverb is of use here: Man plans, God laughs. I’m also reminded of a favorite Polish proverb, “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” which origin story I would love to find out from someone who was there at the time, but I digress.

Digression fits with the whole roadblocks and detours theme. Roadblocks are those things that plop themselves down in our way, cutting off the progress we thought we were ready to make. Detours are the ways we get over, under, around or through them. When we meet a roadblock, we have two options; turn back and end the journey right there, or find a detour. We can choose to get where we want to go by taking another way there.

Sometimes, we learn things by taking a different way there. Maybe we find a better route, or a more scenic one. Maybe we find that the route we never thought we would take is the one we’d like to make the regular one from then on, but never would have even known it existed if the roadblock on the route we always took wasn’t there. Roadblocks aren’t always bad. Sometimes, they’re a clear sign from something/someone bigger than ourselves, saying, “no, not this way,” and sometimes we grouse and kick and scuff our shoes in the dirt, because, dammit, we wanted to go that way.

When I first knew I was a writer, I honestly thought that the only genres open to me were mystery and hard science fiction. Neither are a good fit for me. Romance, though? That’s my home. But I didn’t think it was “allowed.” So I tried and tried and beat my head bloody against a mental brick wall, trying to drum up some enthusiasm, but nothing. So okay. Not those things. Romance. Romance, good. Romance natural. Historical romance as natural as breathing. Even though a good chunk of my current reading is realistic YA, every single time, there’s a part of my brain thinking “this would be amazing set in Prior Era; how would that affect Plot Point or Character?” That’s how I’m wired. So, that’s what I do. Pretty much anything I take in is going to get filtered that way, and I am fine with that.

When I first knew I wanted to pursue writing as a career, I honestly thought there was One Way to do it and it was some trade secret, accessed only to a privileged few. Time and experience taught me that was about as well informed as the only two genres rule above, which is to say, not at all. Must pants, because that’s true creativity. No, must plot, because that’s the only way to have structure. Must count words because that’s what Real Writers Do. Must write linearly because, well, just because, all right. That works for some, but if it doesn’t work for an individual (like the individual writing this blog post, for example) then that’s a big ol’ “detour” sign. If X doesn’t work, try Y. As K.A. Mitchell says, change your seat. Do something else.

If one computer doesn’t access the internet, then that isn’t the internet computer, easy as that. If there’s no H key, get an external keyboard (or only use words without the letter H, which I am sure can be done, but not by me.) Real Life Romance Hero said earlier today that he’s proud of me for slogging through when getting the job done means jumping through electronic hoops, and I am grateful to him for that, but I think the explanation is easy. I don’t have give-up in me when it comes to this writing thing.

My original plan for writing Her Last First Kiss was to make an outline, write the scenes, get a draft done by Date X and…well, no. Man plans, God laughs. Instead, I learned how I’m not really a plotter or a pantser, but a puzzler, and a layered one at that. Find a new thing about story or characters and go back and factor that in and that changes this, which changes the other thing, and that only proves that the story is alive. I can’t drive it to the end, like I’d planned to do, and I can’t let it drag me behind it, but we can work together, this living story and I, going over, under, around and through whatever life throws at us.