Technology is great...
...until it isn't.
Yesterday, just as I was wondering what to write about this week, my laptop keyboard decided it wouldn't work. Just randomly, halfway through a word. Helpful! In fairness, it's done this before, and the solution has been to uninstall the keyboard and restart the laptop, and that seems to fix it.
Not yesterday. Oh no. Nothing fixed it. I have a cousin who is an IT chap and we chatted on the phone, trying various things (while he assured me that a 6 year old laptop was definitely living on borrowed time and I needed to buy a new one). My great friend and running buddy who lives around the corner brought me the keyboard from his computer so I could plug it in and at least log into my laptop after it had restarted.
I spent hours yesterday making sure that everything was backed up, while periodically the laptop had an error and a selection of "sad face on a blue screen" moments. While it did all that, I alternated between knitting, and writing notes for the next book. In a notebook. A paper notebook. You know, one of those things that when you open it, doesn't have a hissy fit about anything.
And this, my friends, is why I love paper, and why I plan my books in notebooks. My brain also seems to be more creative writing with a pen - the ideas flood in and sometimes I can barely write fast enough to capture them all.
Yesterday, that notebook kept me sane... allowing me to scribble away, planning all sorts of awful things for imaginary people, while my laptop sulked and my desk was cluttered with an external keyboard and an external hard drive.
Regular readers will know that my notebook size of choice is B5 - partway between A5 and A4. If A5 always seems a tad small, but A4 is just too big, give it a whirl. Nero stocks some!
My favourites would be the Stalogy, which are slimmer notebooks with beautiful, fountain-pen friendly paper. They're 17.9cm x 25.2cm with card covers in black, blue, or grey.
However, as I was writing this, I spotted an Odyssey B5 notebook with Tomoe River paper in it (the 68gsm version). While the Stalogy might be low-frill, the Odyssey has a few more bells and whistles! There are 272 numbered pages (dot grid), two ribbon markers, a pocket in the back cover, and a hard cover, with lie-flat binding. It looks like a fantastic notebook, especially with the Tomoe River paper in it.
Of course, after yesterday's shenanigans, I was expecting to have to write this in an email to Stu for him to post for me, assuming that my laptop would still be on its deathbed. It booted up just fine this morning, no hissy fits, nothing. I'll still be getting a new one, but nothing will entice me away from planning my books on paper!
And now I'm going to go and journal about how awful it all was, in my B5 Bomo Journal (you know... the one that has so many pages it will last forever!).
Long live paper!
