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Carol M Creasey.

                              I have a Love Hate Relationship with my Computer

I am a writer, so using a computer is essential. When I wrote my first book, it was by hand, and when I managed to get a publisher interested in it, he then told me I needed to send the work in typed with double spacing.

I was so passionate about getting that book published, that I bought a type writer, and using 2 fingers only , I laboriously worked on it every day. I had a deadline of 2 weeks, and had a full time job at the time, so I had to get up at 5am every morning, and put in at least 3 hours of typing before I went to work. The end result was worth it though, because there is nothing quite like seeing you work in print.

For my next book I moved onto a word processor, and this was obviously a lot easier than a type writer, as it was much easier to alter mistakes. Then came the computer, I knew nothing about them, still don’t know a lot, but when you want to succeed at something, you try, and  thanks to  San Disc, and emailing files, I can now send my work  off to interested parties without even  the cost of paper and printing, and it’s all done so quickly too, without having to worry about whether Royal Mail will get it there on time.

That is the good part of it, but when my computer is playing up, that is when I could cheerfully throw it out of the window. Sometimes it won’t connect at all, or the pages stick, and go slowly, or it simply crashes. We have had computer engineers to look at it, paid out money just to be told that “it seems OK now.” I have now come to the conclusion that my computer has a mind of it’s own,  when it’s good I can’t fault it, and when it’s bad, I am the most frustrated writer in the world. Will I ever be the master of it? I don’t think so.