I’ve crossed the halfway marker in total word count this week for Starveyors, my Work In Progress(WIP). Sitting at around 44,000 words and counting. Progress through this middle part of the novel had been slow. Not because the story is lacking, but mostly because external forces are making it harder to allocate the time to write. Also, I believe the warmer weather is making my brain slow to a crawl. I’m finding it very hard to concentrate on writing.
Writing a novel is a complex mental task. It requires you to think about your characters, your plot and your world building. In the middle of a novel you are juggling subplots like spinning plates all while worrying about your main character’s development and a whole host of other pressing matters. Oh, and trying your best to keep your butt in the chair and your fingers typing. My mind of late has not been up to that complex task.
My trusty white MacBook is on its death bed. It’s about six years old. I’ve written four and a half novels and a dozen short stories on it. The track pad button is unreliable and the case is slowly disintegrating. A plethora of stickers on the outside are all that’s keeping it together. I really need to invest in a new laptop.
But sales have been down these past few months so my writing income is not going to cover a hardware upgrade. I have enough funds to pay for an editor and a copy editor and hopefully my cover artist, but not enough for all that and a new laptop. The good news is that I can finally afford to fund a novel that I self-publish from money earned self-publishing. Someday, I hope to make enough to pay for a new laptop for that writing. Someday. In the meantime, I’ll suck it up and buy a new laptop and keep on writing.
For the curious, it looks like I’ll be going with a 13″ Macbook Air. Hopefully I’ll get another six years out of that one.
Angela,
Hey, glad the blog posts are useful. Drop a comment anytime, it’s good to hear from you!
Stosh,
I have Ubuntu running on my MacBook right now. It works fine, except for that stuck track pad button. Which also affects the Mac side of the laptop. My only requirement for writing is the Scrivener program. Which is only on Mac or Windows. I sit on a Windows box all day at work and hate it. I don’t mind using the Mac OS.
Someday, Scrivener will work on Linux and then I can ditch Mac. Until then, I’m strapped to the Apple.
Awesome that you are using Linux in the kid’s school. My youngest uses Linux Mint on his desktop and Ubuntu on our HP Mini.
My wife and I teach 1-3 grade together so we don’t make a lot of money. We each have 6-7 year old ibooks that are on their last legs. We bought a new macbook pro for my wife. I went a different direction because of lack of funds. I bought a used Thinkpad and put LinuxMint on it. I decided to try and use it exclusively for a while. I ended up really liking it and I used it alone for 6 months. I am not sure what your requirements are for writing but a used laptop with the Linux distro of your choice may be a good option until more funds come along. I also set up two old laptops in our class with Linux for the kids to use. Works great.
I’m in the same boat with my seven year old laptop. Slowing down and no more upgrades available. My husband’s maxed out the ram and I think it’s time to put it out of our misery. But since money is very tight, guess I get to limp it along for a few more months. I haven’t read your blogs in a while, been busy setting up my publishing biz but read a couple and learn tons. Thanks, Ken.