A Functional Office

I've finally settled down into my office, but have yet to establish a writing routine. Life keeps getting in the way, and I think the only way for me to accomplish anything is to "force" myself to lock myself away from it all behind the sanctuary of a closed door. It took me a while to make my office functional, but I think I'm finally at the point where I have no more excuses.

The Reading Chair, aka, Bella's chair

The view from the Reading Chair

It's a small office, but now that I've thrown out the old and brought in the new, I really love it.

The star is that desk. Just look at that baby. Once I got rid of the moths in it, yes, moths, I lovingly polished and cleaned it. It's about twice the size of my old one, which was a kiddie desk. Look at the top of it, it's huge. And as if that wasn't enough, there's two pull outs above each top side drawer. They really come in handy. The drawers are so deep and long I was able to fit most of the files I had piled all around my office, my technical equipment, and office supplies, and I still have room. My legs fit easily underneath and I can't even reach the back wall when I stretch out. When Bella's scared she'll curl up under it and there's so much room she doesn't bother me at all.

So, now that I have the desk, the next piece of functional equipment is the MacBook. How have I adjusted from PC to Mac? Wonderfully! I love it. It took me a little bit of getting used to it and now I'm not so "afraid." One thing that's really helped is watching the videos from PC Classes On-line. David Cox has really helped with the transition and I highly recommend checking them out, even if you're not a newbie like me. I'm sure there are some tips that will help you.

Okay, so I have the office, the desk, the MacBook. Now that I was comfortable enough with the Mac I decided I needed to add a functional word processing program to the mix. Although my first inclination was to buy Microsoft's Word, I did a little more research and spoke to a couple of other writers who use a program called Scrivener. It's really more than a word processor, and it only cost me $24.99. With this program I am able to "outline, edit, storyboard and write" as their tagline claims. At first it was daunting. I watched a couple of Youtube videos and read the entire on-line manual. I was still unsure, but once I jumped in and began applying what I learned into practice I am happy to report, I love it!

As you may or may not know, I've been researching my current work in process for years, yes, years. During that time I've accumulated so much data, which in turn became notes, that it has almost become unmanageable. Frankly, it was overwhelming and I think one of the reasons I kept procrastinating. Now that I've begun using Scrivener I don't feel so out of control. I've been able to take those notes from my real cork board and place them in a virtual cork board instead. I am able to create character sheets, research notes, and time-lines which I can simply reference with one click instead of having to shuffle through pages and pages of "stuff." I'm now able to edit before I even write, and I don't have to be so concerned about duplicating either.

Rather than worry about going from point A to B to C, with the way the program is designed I can now write whatever chapter I want and move it around later on. Since my book starts from the late 1700's up through the present day, I can separate each "era" as a chapter and each character or event as a scene in that chapter. For instance, I've got everything set up and organized for the 1763 tale and can now begin writing it. Once that draft is done, I can "forget about it" and focus on compiling everything for the 1800 one, and work my way up through each era. After everything is written I should be able to "compile" all the chapters into different formats including eBooks and print books. I'm nowhere near that point and I'm sure I will be watching more Youtube videos when I eventually get there.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to. My office is functional...let's hope I am too!

By the way, although I am not blogging as much as I have in the past, I have not abandoned it, so I hope you stick around.

I #amprocrastinating no more!

Many years ago when I was fighting to keep a cell tower from being erected on church property directly behind my kids' elementary school, one of the church men called me a troglodyte and a Luddite in the newspaper. I don't know if I was more annoyed that a "good Christian church leader" would be throwing stones at me in a public forum, or, that I had to look up the word Luddite. BTW, here's the meaning, just in case you didn't know: 1. any of the textile workers opposed to mechanization who rioted and organized machine-breaking between 1811 and 1816. 2. any opponent of industrial change or innovation. I wasn't opposed to mechanization, industrial change, or innovation; I was just looking to make sure young children wouldn't be directly in the path of radiation. Although I did "save" the kids I made a lot of enemies, and was sure not to be getting invited to any church picnics, or to any of the PTA mom's homes whose husbands worked in telecommunications. Oh well, it was worth it.

The point of the above paragraph is that  Mr. Churchman might have had a point. I am sometimes "afraid" of new, well, new to me at least, technology. It's not that I don't want to be a part of it; it's more that I'm afraid I will screw up whatever device I am attempting to use. I believe this all stems from the year 1987 when I bought my first computer. It was an Amiga and it cost me quite a pretty penny. I think it was almost $2,000 and all it had was 1 mb hard drive! This was before there was internet readily available, and Google, so I had to follow the directions of the manual (remember when you actually got a manual when you bought something?) on how to set it up. The first thing I was instructed to do was back up the system. It used those hard floppy disks which had to be formatted before anything could be written on it. I really had no idea what I was doing and no one else I knew had a computer so I winged it. Well, in short order, I wiped out the entire computer somehow deleting the operating system and everything else that was in it. I brought the monstrosity back and the clerk said he'd never seen that happen before. He re-installed everything, but after that I became gun-shy every time I turned it on.

Since that time I've had quite a few other computers. Believe it or not, the one I bought after the Amiga, in 1995, a Packard Bell, I still use, solely for payroll. The rest of them have not lasted as long. They were all pc's driven by Windows. I've had Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, & Vista. My desktop, where I composed most of my writings, was XP and I never had a problem with it, until Microsoft and all the virus programs I had stopped supporting it. Of course the keyboard was unreadable. The acid in my fingertips rendered the white lettering gone;  I had to use white-out on the black keys so I could read at least some of the letters. But I was happy with it, until Microsoft said, "Nope, you're not. It's time for a new computer!" But wait, I still had my laptop with Vista, the keys also unreadable and the letter T and U not functioning any longer, but I remedied that with a $5 keyboard that I hooked up via USB. That was okay for a while but then those damn Microsoft updates started in on me again. I refused to install them. There were well over a hundred, and the laptop took forever to load anything, but I knew once I hit install, that would be the kiss of death, just like it happened on a couple of other laptops that came and went quickly after updates screwed them up.

Meanwhile, my muse was starting to yell at me. Every time I'd sign on to Twitter I'd see #amwriting trending and I would think, damn, are all those authors really writing? The only writing I was doing was maybe a blog post here or there, grocery lists, checks, and notes on index cards. The more I researched, the more notes, the more index cards, the more legal pads, the more xeroxes lined my office walls, the more I began to realize what I am really doing with this book is #amprocrastinating. I had a million excuses, but the most pressing one was, I didn't want to begin the book on the computers I had. So that meant it was time to buy a new computer. For someone who has a hard time finding the perfect pocketbook this would not be an easy task.

Both my kids said, "Leave me outta this!" but then offered their advice. My son said he would only help if I allowed him to build me a computer, but I told him I think I wanted to get a laptop. He couldn't help there. My daughter said I should go Mac. She has one and swears by it. My son, a pc man, poo-pooed her, but did understand my reluctance to go with anything Windows 8 related. "Yeah, it sucks." I listened to the girl last year when I dropped some serious dough on an iPhone, and have to say she was right. Although it took me a while to get it, I really did love my Envy 3, Verizon sort of pushed me to the point that I knew I needed to just drop them and go with Smart Talk. I'm glad I listened to her. I actually love my iPhone and even though it took some getting used to I now feel comfortable with it. So when I said I was afraid to go with a Mac, it was the girl's turn to poo-poo me. "You're not an idiot, but if it'll make you feel better go check out MacBook for Dummies." So that's what I did.

And then it happened. I decided I could no longer wait to get started on this book, so I got out my American Express card and used it on a MacBook Pro. I had it sit in the box on the table for hours and the kids laughed at me. It was like I was afraid to open it before reading up on it. Finally, after my husband started goofing on me, I figured it was time. So I asked my son to disable the old desktop and put it away. I cleaned my desk and raised the chair. I unpacked it, opened it up, and just like that, it was up and running! I was able to hook it up to my wireless router and both printers with ease. Didn't even have to ask for help, other than the password for the wireless account.

I'm still figuring it out, but it's not as daunting as I thought it would be. I still haven't synced my phone to it, but little by little I'm getting more comfortable. In fact, this is my maiden blog post on it. No pics, yet. Unlike my old laptop which sat on the dining room table, this one won't. It will remain in my office which has a door that I can close. I'm going to treat this book as a job, devoting a couple hours each day, starting Monday. And when that door is closed that means I #amwriting, and I #amprocrastinating no more! I hope...