This doesn't happen that often for me. I am not the most prolific writer, generally requiring the most perfect circumstances to feed my muse, which of course, rarely happens. So when I finally got on a creative roll and my Macbook starting spontaneous deleting passages and opening new windows, I despaired.
I know what's wrong with my Macbook because I've had it fixed before -- a swollen battery putting pressure on the trackpad, causing phantom cursor movements. But this computer is past its expiration, and I don't want to pay to fix it again, and I don't yet have the funds set aside for a new Macbook.
So what do I do? Trust me, I've tried everything, and this is what works (sort-of).
Plan A. Bang Macbook.
This is effective some of the time, the impact nudging the battery back in place. Plus I feel better after I knock something around.Plan B. Massage the back of the Macbook.
I think this also puts the battery back in place, but it might just put the Macbook in a better mood -- the Good Cop to Plan A's Bad Cop.Plan C. Drafting on my Kindle Fire with a Bluetooth keyboard.
A Kindle Fire is really an Android tablet, and this one is poetically appropriate -- ashes to ashes, Kindle to Kindle. Most books end up there eventually.So far a combo of these strategies is working. I write on the Kindle, and transfer my working sessions into Scrivener on my Macbook, when it's working OK through my efforts at Plan A and B.
At first I used OfficeSuite for Android. Then I lost a whole morning's work due to lack of backup function in OfficeSuite and my own poor work habits. In addition to not being prolific, I'm also not very resilient. So I tried to recover the document, and when I couldn't, I could either move forward or not, so I rewrote it. My document did not recover, but I did.
Now I'm using an Evernote app for Android, which backs up itself and makes it easy to transfer scenes between Kindle and Macbook. It's actually not bad -- I am not as distracted by other things when I'm using my Kindle. My focus is better. And I'm halfway done with drafting -- 37,000 words.
The halfway part is where it gets easy, right? Right??? Like rolling down a hill (tell me I'm right, please).
But if it doesn't, I have gotten myself to the place where the perfect circumstances for writing don't matter. I could use my Bluetooth keyboard and write on Evernote on my iPhone if I had to. I could write with a pen and notebook. I could write in a box with a fox on a train in the rain, preferably while rolling down a hill.
