My Favourite Thing

For this week's GBE2 topic:

My favourite thing has to be my computer (and the world-wide web).

It's a love-hate relationship!

I hate it when it won’t do what I want it to do and I have to spend ages working out just HOW to do something.  I hate it when something goes wrong (although I have the most wonderful computer expert who is usually round here within 24 hours of my agonised phone-call), and I hate it when my broadband connection starts playing up or, even worse, goes off altogether.
Oh, and I sometimes hate the way it makes me waste time playing games when I should be writing too!

But my love for it far outweighs the occasional and temporary frustration and hatred.  I only have to think back to when I was writing my novels in the 1960’s and 70’s.  I wrote everything in longhand, with multiple crossing out, asterisks and arrows changing or adding paragraphs, stapled extra pages with longer insertions. 

Then came the length process of typing out the story on an old upright Remington.  If I made a typo which couldn’t be concealed with correction tape, the page was ripped out and I had to start it all over again. And don’t even mention changing the ribbon, when invariably I got it twisted and/or got my hands (and everything else) covered in ink.  How different it is now to write, change, add, delete, count words, find and replace repeat words and phrases, spell-check – need I go on?

Another reason for loving my computer is all the information which is there with a quick search and a mouse-click.  Facts, figures, train times, flight durations, maps and photos.  I’ve used them all for my current WIP, set in Egypt.  The ‘research’ has taken minutes rather than hours in the reference section of the library making copious notes.

Last, but definitely not least, is the opportunity to keep in contact with family and friends.  Before email and Facebook, I was in contact with my American cousins once a year (the annual Christmas letter).  Now we communicate regularly.

And, of course, there’s the opportunity to ‘meet’ and ‘talk’ with new friends.  When I was writing in the 60’s and 70’s, I was isolated.  I didn’t know any other writers and there was no opportunity to meet any.  Now I have dozens of writer friends.  Most of them I’ve never met in ‘real’ life but I know that, if the opportunity came to meet any of them, we would greet each other, not as strangers, but as friends. 

Thank you, all my blogging, facebook and twitter friends!  J