What did we do before the internet?

If you’ve seen less of me online the latley, that’s because the internet stopped working at my place for a few days. It’s back now and I am scrambling to keep up with everything I missed and fell behind on. I feel like I am just about caught up, but it makes me wonder what we did before the internet.

I’m thinking the life of a pre-internet writer pretty much consisted of sitting at a desk and writing. If they needed to look something up there was probably a dictionary close at hand. Something requiring more research might have involved a short note and a trip to the library at some point.

Modern writers have a wealth of information at their fingertips. Unfortunately, all that information can be a bit distracting. When I need to look something up, I just pop open my web browser (Who am I kidding? It’s probably already opened.) it can be anything from a complex research question to a very basic spelling question. Even though I have a dictionary within reach, it’s still easier to go to Google and let the search engine correct me on my misspelling.

Of course, once I have my answer all I need to do is head back over to the old work in progress, but usually I don’t. I remind myself that’s it’s been awhile since I’m visited those great lands of timesuck known as Twitter and Facebook. Also, I should check my email. I then waste three and half minutes watching the funny video someone sent me. Then I remember to read that blog I like, but there’s a link to another blog, and another. I discover a blog I’ve never read before and am instantly hooked, and oh look she’s soliciting captions or inspired stories for a funny photo so I have to use some of that creativity I should be using on the WIP.

By the time I get back to work, my stomach’s telling me it’s time to take a meal break. The illusion is that computers let us write so much faster than having to write things out by longhand or fighting with a typewriter, but I have a feeling that only computers without web access really let us work faster.

Well, now that I’ve caught up from my internet hiatus, it’s time to get back to work. Well, just as soon as I figure out how to fix my busted iPod. I should probably look that up on Google.

I’m not here today, I’m over at The Book Scout

A little while back Kelsey who runs the fabulous blog The Book Scout interviewed me for an ongoing series of blog posts, and I’m excited to report that my interview is now up.

So, if you’d like to learn a little bit more about me and find a great new blog head on over to The Book Scout.

What’s your most inadvertently funny typo?

Last week I accidentally created a new creature by typing the word “alligator” instead of “octopus” and creating a sort of alligator octopus hybrid, which isn’t quite as scary as this picture of a bearsharktopus found on RationalSkepticism.org but still isn’t something I’d like to run into the next time I’m out for a swim. Thankfully, Sarah and her sharp eyes caught my mistake and I was able to make the needed correction.

That was nearly as bad as the time I sent my cousin an email about how I had won a writing contest. The only problem was that I had typed it as “one a writing contest.” I don’t know what was worse, the ironic typo or the fact that it was pointed out to me by my art major cousin.

Thankfully WordPress has a built in spellchecker or my most inadvertently funny typo would have been misspelling the word “inadvertently” in the title of this post. It took me three times to get it right.

So, be honest what’s the funniest typo you ever made?

It’s okay to write in anger

One of my mother’s favorite authors, Dorothea Benton Frank was in town this evening for a book signing, so I accompanied Mom on a trip down to the Clinton Book Shop.

Dorothea had lots of fun writing stories to share including some horror stories from her first book tour including an ill-fated trip to a Georgia Barnes & Noble where the event manager had quit and no one knew about her arrival and she ended up talking to an audience of two who turned out to just be there for the air conditioning. But my favorite part of her talk was her answer to the question of what got her started writing. She told the audience that it was a fight with her husband that made her decide to start writing.

She was mad at her husband for not buying her family home when they had the opportunity to do so, and she was looking for a career that she could take on while also raising her kids. So, she channeled that anger and set her mind to writing. The happy ending is that she has gone on to have a successful writing career and is still happily married to her husband.

There’s a lot of things it’s not advisable to do in anger, but writing, thankfully, is not one of them – well, as long as what you are writing is a work of fiction, and not, say, an email to your boss! So, the next time you get really angry, maybe you should sit down and write a story. Hey, it worked for Dorothea Benton Frank.

I’m not here today

Hey, there. I’m not here today, but you can read a guest blog post about a book I haven’t written over at Jeff Widmer’s Crossroads blog.

Oh, and don’t forget to stop back here tomorrow to read Jeff’s great post on book promotion.

An Interview with Stephen Parrish author of The Tavernier Stones

Stephen Parrish, author of The Tavernier Stones is here today to answer a few of my questions,  but before we start the interview, I want to tell you to do  yourself a favor and pick up a copy of The Tavernier Stones. It’s a great novel full of adventure, mystery and puzzles to solve and it is a perfect summer reading book. I really enjoyed this novel, and in one of those weird ways that real life and fiction have of intersecting when I sat down to read it, I was surprised to find that a big chunk of the story was set in Lancaster, PA where I had just been a few days earlier. Also if you need one more reason to read The Tavernier Stones (you shouldn’t!) it is published by Midnight Ink, which like Flux (who is publishing my novel next year) is an imprint of Llewellyn so their is obviously some sort of connection between The Tavernier Stones and The Subrosa Semesters.

Here’s a more official details about The Tavernier Stones:

“When the well-preserved body of a seventeenth century mapmaker floats to the surface of a bog in northern Germany, a 57 carat ruby clutched in his fist, the grisly discovery ignites a global race to find the fabled Lost Tavernier Stones.”  You can read more about it at www.stephenparrish.com

By the way if you are a treasure seeker or just like diamonds Stephen is giving away a one carat diamond to the first person who can find the image of one he has hidden somewhere on the web; the contest is described at www.tavernierstones.com.

And now, on to that interview:

What inspired you to write The Tavernier Stones?

I didn’t want to at first.  I wanted to write other things.  But the odd combination of maps and gems, both of which I was pursuing professionally at the time, naturally led me to conjure up an idea, one that subbornly refused to be ignored.  I spent four years kicking the idea back into its drawer each time it tried to climb out, before finally relenting and writing it.  Maybe that’s how all stories ought to be written: the next one you tackle is always the one that’s pestering you the most.
/em>