Write On

Ambrose and I, as is our tradition, went camping over Memorial Day Weekend. Car camping, because most of the trails we like are still snowed in at this time of year. Plus, it always seems to rain over Memorial Day. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up with any production tasks on my guide book, because that depended too much on my at home computer. But I was able to keep up with my writing.

Not the way I originally planned though.

I had hoped to take an old mini laptop out to the campsite and use it to type things up, but when I tried to start the old thing up, I found a problem. The battery wouldn't charge.

At Ambrose's suggestion, I tried shutting it down and taking the battery out and putting it back in. I tried letting it stay plugged in all night. Nope, nope, nope. It just wouldn't charge, and without the battery, it would be useless at the campsite we were planning on occupying.

So I had to go for plan b.

I didn't like plan b as much, because it involved using the cell phone to type my thousand words each day. The type/swipe method in google docs isn't the easiest when it comes to speed. I have to go slow enough to notice when google wants to replace the words I'm trying to type with words it thinks I should be typing. I did warn Ambrose that there would be weird typos, but I did try to catch as many of them as I could.

Probably where the story is flowing best is where he'll find the most errors.

And, plan b was better than plan c, which was writing everything out longhand and then typing it back up when I got back. That option had several major drawbacks. First, I would have to count my words to make sure I was writing to my goal each day. Second, I'd have to write slowly so my handwriting would reach a bare minimum standard of legibility. Most tedious of all, I'd have to actually retype everything at home. A time suck and difficult because of the handwriting thing.

Luckily, using the cell phone worked perfectly. And it made up for the fact that I'd forgotten the camera at home. Overall, it was a fun weekend, though it did rain every day (and hailed on Saturday).