Jacqueline P Vincent

My new (refurbished) laptop arrived yeaterday. I am over the moon with it. It is a Lenovo Ideapad with hospital grade keyboard. I’m not sure if this is a good thing for a writer or not. I assume if I write about a murder and want to act it out, my keyboard will be safe. I’ll be able to wipe offf the blood and gore without any noticeable damage to said keyboard.

My old workhorse a Lenovo Thinkpad, died a couple of months ago, after eight years of excellent service. I was distraught. Whilst deciding what to have next, I wasn’t prepared for this decision, I’ve been using an old Spanish laptop, broken screen, attached to an even older screen with the Lenovo harddrive used as an external harddrive. All these pieces of equipment were linked by miles of cable and took an age to fire up. After turning all the parts on, I would go off and make a cup of tea. On my return, if I was lucky, it was ready to use.

Over these couple of months, I lost documents, emails and I wasn’t sure where stuff had been saved. The harddrive on the Spanish laptop or the external one, or not at all. I can say it has been a couple of frustrating, low output months. That will change. Today, I have edited a piece of flash fiction and sent it off to a competition. Arranged files, downloaded the apps and programmes I’m comfortable with, deleted stuff I don’t or won’t use and cleaned up my email accounts.