Gotta Have Our Toys

I love my toys.  In times of stress or boredom, my toys become my tools to restoration of my equilibrium and joy.  Not to say that I am addicted to say… my computer… or my kindle… but hey, when it quacks, it’s gotta be a duck.

There are more personal computers out there every year, and I suspect the number of laptops easily out-sells the larger, more immobile desktops. I finally bought my first laptop last summer, and absolutely love the ease with which I can carry it with me. I ‘pute in bed (like now) with my Toshiba settled on the bed tray my daughter gave me for Christmas last year. I ‘pute on my desk. I ‘pute on the patio. I ‘pute mostly lately on the eating table in our breakfast area so I can be close to Jim in his recliner in the den. But needless to say, I love my laptop.

A couple of months ago, I yielded to the temptation and ordered my first kindle… a Kindle 2… from Amazon. I saw the electronic reading device on Oprah last year when the Kindle 1 came out. Even back then I was fascinated with the idea of carrying so many books in such a small and easily tucked away device. The cost deterred me at the time from trying it, but in February I caved and ordered the newer Kindle 2, which had just been released for sale.

Pricey, yes. But now I can’t imagine how I lived without it. I carry it everywhere. The slender, lightweight device fits perfectly in my purse. And yes, I spent more and ordered a cover for my naked little kindle. Even now I’m considering a skin, like one of those skins used on cell phones… decorative, but also protective of the surfaces. Not for one minute have I regretted my purchases.

When Jim was in the hospital for surgery to remove a malignant tumor from his colon a couple of weeks ago, my kindle stayed right there with me while I sat in a horrible, pain-inducing recliner and waited for his body to recover.

Before the hospital experience, I took my baby to our home in Rector for a week’s vacation. I read in the car along the way. Unlike my laptop, the kindle’s screen is not backlit, so there is no battle with sunlight or glare. It’s like reading a page of paper. I don’t understand the technology, and have no need or desire to explore that side of my kindle, but somehow reading on the kindle is just like a page of a book. So it is very take-along-able. Anywhere you’d take a book, you can take this small device.

I like being able to make the font larger. I like being able to write a note and insert it in a bookmarked place within a book I’m reading. I like having a dictionary built it so that I can simply place the cursor at the beginning of a word and get a definition. I like the super fast delivery of books from Amazon through a cell-phone like network called Whispernet. I don’t have to order through my computer, and the books are delivered usually in under a minute. I like that I can download a sample of a book for free. Reading a first chapter can save me money if I see I don’t care for the book, after all.  I like that I can have up to 1500 books stored in my kindle for reading anywhere, anytime. I like that when I’ve read a book, I can delete it, but the book is recorded at Amazon, and if I want to download it again, I can… for free… because I’ve already bought it. I also like that the books are reasonably priced… usually not over 9.99.

Did I say I love my kindle?

Changing Gears

Always so much to learn. If the learning ever stops, then I think I must be dead.

Through Romance Divas I connected with a nice, intuitive, and smart woman who agreed to critique this first chapter (posted as Footprints 1, 2, & 3). Her input gave me much to think about, and I’m grateful for that.

One thing she said really hit home. I am terrible about writing a scene or chapter, and then re-working it to death. I don’t mean a simple reading back through and jotting down some notes. I mean drastic rewrites. I am so guilty of doing this rather than continuing to write that I can’t believe it took someone else to point that out to me. She quoted something from Nora Roberts on this: “I can fix shit; I can’t fix nothing.”

Think about that.

Anyway, I love Footprints, but I don’t know exactly where it’s going. It’s been about ten years since I wrote what is posted here. That’s a long time and distance from a story I was never very sure of in the first place.

An email from an old critique partner and dear friend now has me looking in another direction. Instead of writing another long contemporary (at this time), I’m going to try a short story. She is one of the publishers of a southern press called Bellebooks, and they have a series of down-home, Southern-style books called Mossy Creek. The books all revolve around a place in Georgia called Mossy Creek. Each book is an anthology of short stories involving the unique people of Mossy Creek. I’m re-reading and studying and thinking and hopefully will soon have an idea (or premise as I read in a blog recently) for a story that I can submit for an upcoming anthology.

I’ve never tried short stories because they are hard. I’m too wordy to be concise and crisp with my writing. BUT… I’m going to try to be just that. The big key will be in capturing the mood, voice, feel of Mossy Creek.

What might help is that in recent months I’ve gravitated more toward southern women writers’ books than category romance. I’ve read Dorothea Benton Frank and Cassandra King and other authors of what I call chick lit. They’re stand alone mainstream titles. These two authors evoke a mood that I enjoy and that perhaps will help me to find the right voice for the Mossy Creek stories.

Anyone out there read Frank or King? Let me hear your thoughts, if you do. What about the Mossy Creek books?