Gremlins

[Peg Herring]

It's taken them a while to find me, but the Gremlins have arrived. I'm pretty sure Lola the Garmin Voice led me far astray in getting to Sanibel Island yesterday. If that's the only way to get there, I can't believe the thousands of bumper-to-bumper cars I saw there made it. Then, in the middle of a call yesterday my cell phone went dead. No amount of coaxing seems likely to resuscitate it. And when I checked into a hotel (at a scary price) they actually require that I hook my computer to the wall and then perform a series of complex operations to get online. Well, we all know my level of technological competence, so we know that will NOT work. So here I sit in the lobby, where there's wi-fi. Several loud Republican gentlemen are behind me, dissing Hillary. This won't last long.

What does this have to do with writing? Not a lot, I suppose, but it does bring home to me how dependent my writing is on technology. I have friends who write their MSs long-hand. Can't even imagine it, although I must have done it at one time. I have friends with no cell phones. They must stay pretty close to home, because on the road, the cell is life. And of course I have friends who actually still use maps to navigate. None of those things is, per se, evil. It's just that I need simpicity: I want to call when I need to, get online in a trice, and spend as little time as possible going in the wrong direction. if one is going to go on the road to market a book, which is a neccessity these days, one will do better to have all the technological help available.

If it works.