I’ve been expecting this for a while. Every time I seem to get a good in a good groove with regards to writing, something happens to bump me off track. Small things, usually, like kids being sick, or me being sick, or other small inconveniences that derail the new (and ergo fragile) creative habits. So with progress going as well as it has the last two weeks (slow but steady) I was expecting something, and mentally preparing myself to work through whatever glitch life had in store for me, instead of using it as an excuse to stop working, like I have so often in the past.
But I wasn’t expecting a life glitch of a purely technical nature. Oh, I should have, because the computer monitor started fitzing at me a couple weeks ago. At first, the picture would blank out, for less then a second, accompanied by a little staticky POP that I knew boded ill, right from the start. The only thing that didn’t have me pulling my hair out in total agony was that I knew it was just the monitor — the computer itself seemed unaffected by the screen’s spastic behavior.
The blackout times began to increase over time, in length and frequency, until this last week when it wasn’t just the screen going dark, but the whole power thingee (fear my technical jargon!) cycling off and on, sometimes more than once in a row, several times an hour. Annoying, yes, but not yet a crisis, because most of the time it was operating just fine. It just had its moments.
Fortunately, I had finished all the important on-screen work I needed to do yesterday when the monitor decided to call it quits for good. I had sent out two submissions via e-mail (one flash piece, one poem) and had printed out mailing labels, cover letter, and the final, edited draft of “Caribou House” to be sent by mail. I had turned my attention to editing Chapter 2 of False Queen (and, honestly, not making good progress, since I’d stayed up way to late the night before working on it). The screen went dark.
I sighed and waited for the monitor to run through its power cycle — you know the sounds a monitor makes starting up (at least the old-fashioned kind, I’m sure modern flat panel models are much quieter) — there’s a kind of a bong and a whirr and a click as the picture fades into view. So I waited. Bong, whirr, click. Fitz. Bong, whirr, click. Fitz. Bong, whirr, click. Fitz. It was on its fourth or fifth that I realized something serious had gone wrong.
To make a long story short (too late, I know!) the monitor on the PC is totally dead now. When I push the power button, I don’t even get the bong and the whirr anymore; it’s just “click fitz click fitz click fitz”. Over and over again. A pathetic bleat from a dying mechanical beast.
Not having a monitor at home is, as I’m sure you can see, not just a minor glitch that I can work around through sheer will power. It’s not an issue of being distracted or too tired or what-have-you: I can’t work because I literally don’t have the tool which I need to work. I can assure you that I felt a moment of real panic when I realized that the monitor was not going to come back on, and that a new monitor was not in the cards, at least until after tax season. This was a true crisis.
Or it could have been. While immediately flummoxed about how I was going to proceed, I knew (after that first instant of panic) that I was going to proceed: I just had to figure out how. And I have figured it out, or I am in the process of it, anyway. There is, of course, no single solution, but the first thing was to put a wanted ad out on Freecycle for a pc monitor, so with any luck this will be a short-term glitch.
In the meantime, I’ll just have to concentrate chunking out rough drafts of upcoming chapters in long-hand, and hope that I’ll still be able to read my handwriting when it comes time to transcribe them! The fine writing that comes during the editing process will just have to wait; while I might be able to squeeze in some writing time while at work (lunch hour, after work), I find it hard to concentrate with a lot of activity around, which is why the wee hours of the night (ahem, 9 pm to 11 pm) are my most productive.
Please note that writing long-hand is not necessarily an ideal alternative for me, not even accounting for the quality of my handwriting. Sitting at a computer is Not Comfortable, a state which encourages one to remember why one is sitting there in the first place (no, not Spider Solitaire!), so focusing on work is less of a challenge. However, with my little notebook and pen I can sit anywhere, and the temptation will be to find someplace Comfortable, inducing a state of relaxation that, especially in the late hours of the evening, encourages one to do silly things, like sleeping. I may have to go ahead and clear off the desk in my room and make myself sit there for two hours every evening, just to keep myself on task.
Maybe none of this seems like a big deal to you, but it does to me. I think I’ve wasted a lot of time waiting for the ideal circumstances in which to write. Haven’t we all done that, imagined our “perfect writing day,” what it would be like if writing was your only job and everything in your life was aligned to provide exactly the environment you think you need to create? Even though we may acknowledge that “perfect” is not realistic, there is still a tendency to hold off until everything in the life that you do have is just so and you have the freedom you think you need to be creative.
But the truth is, even that ideal state is reached, it’s never going to stay that way. Things are going to happen, and if you let those things interfere with your work, you’re never going to make any progress. I know this: I’ve got 20 or so years of getting interrupted to prove it! Well, I’m not going to be interrupted anymore. I’m shaking my fist in the face of broken computers, sick kids, and all of life’s messes and making my declaration to keep working, regardless of the circumstances. For me, that’s a big deal.
Nothing in the ‘verse can stop me!
