If you’ve been thinking that I’ve dropped off the edge of the planet, you’re right. I’ve been embroiled in some nasty computer issues. (Look closely enough, and you’ll see bald patches on my scalp where I’ve torn out my hair.) It all started about a year ago when I bought a new PC with a Vista operating system. Over the next few months it acted like a child throwing a tantrum. I took it in to the doctor for analysis, and it came back just as ornery as ever. So when I heard about the Windows 7 upgrade, I thought, yippee! My troubles are over! So in November I happily changed my operating system to Windows 7, not knowing that in that little green box was the devil incarnate, just waiting to send me and my computer to techno hell.

I’ll spare you the gory details. Suffice it to say that my new/old PC now lies smoldering in the dust heap, while I type this on my spanking new Macbook Pro. But I couldn’t leave the PC world behind entirely, no indeed. After all, the wheels of the publishing industry turn on PCs. It’s comply or die. So I solved my dilemma with a MAC program that allows me to run a virtual PC in my MAC. It’s literally two computers in one, and I’m loving it. I feel like I’ve awakened from a sweating, gripping nightmare to see the sun peeking over the horizon and hear the birds chirp.

All this has got me thinking. Just how and when did my life became so interconnected with computers, the Internet, and email? Just when did my entire day get flushed down the loo if my computer froze or had to spend a week with Dr. PC? Anymore my days consist of dozens of emails, electronic manuscripts, copyedits in WORD, htmls and pdfs and jpgs and tifs, chirps and tweets. In fact, there’s so much techno “support” for my career that I can hardly get any writing squeezed in there.

I’ve begun to pine for the good ol’ days, days when authors used ink pots and quill pens. When they didn’t have spell checker and actually had to get off their butts to pull the dictionary off the shelf. Mary Shelley was only twenty years old when she finished her novel, FRANKENSTEIN. As the story of its creation goes, it was a contest between friends as to who could write the scariest story. (Apparently they were holed up in some villa near Lake Geneva. The weather was nasty.) Now mind you, the contest was not who could watch the most movies, or who could post the most tweets, or who could text the fastest, but who could write the scariest story. Kind of scary when you think about it. A whole bunch of people choosing to go to their separate rooms and simply write. With old-fashioned ink on old-fashioned paper. Probably illumined by the light of an oil lamp. On a hard chair.

Thinking of Mary Shelley, I sometimes wonder if I’ve lost my center. Any time a piece of machinery can hold the key to my happiness/success/productivity (circle one), then something’s seriously out of whack. I don’t know the answers. I’ll think about it. I think it’s all tied up with future progress somehow. Like we’re all headed somewhere important and only computers can take us there. Meanwhile, I’ve got some tweeting to do. And laundry. But this evening I think I’ll kick back and read FRANKENSTEIN. Should be easy enough. After all, it’s on my Kindle.