How Not to Write

Keep buying new gizmos, telling yourself: "No, really... I just have to have this cooler-than-cool blush pink, razor thin laptop and THEN I'll write... promise!"

No you won't. Take it from me. But that's not to say that this new baby has not added much joy - not to mention attention - to my life. The Vaio C-Series in pink may very well be the cutest laptop in history. I thought my white ibook was (and am still loathe to part with it) but I was wrong. I used to get a few "your laptop is so cute" comments with the ibook, but this is a whole other level. Some people see the pink and smirk (not in the nice, kind of sexy way) but most just marvel.

And yet, you have to be seriously deranged to go out of your way to order a custom built laptop in pink, make your US-dwelling friend buy it for you because Sony won't sell to non US-residents online, rather than just walk into a store and buy a *normal* one like everyone else. Or better yet, just keep using your perfectly good ibook until it dies, which looks like never. Still, it's pink, says I. I must be the holy grail of the marketing industry. People in stuffy boardrooms armed with PowerPoint presentations and focus group data have me in mind when they go up to the engineers and say: make it pink. At which point I'm sure the engineers (who have spent countless hours and time away from their video games and chess clubs to come up with the most technologically advanced machines they can imagine)roll their eyes and think marketing people are retarded. Little do they know, marketing people are in fact the boy-geniuses of the new economy. I did not purchase this computer for its technical prowess. Come to think of it, this computer may have no technical prowess to speak of. But, you know, it's pink.

Other ways to guarantee you will never write (especially if you happen to have hit a bit of a wall in your WIP) is to hook your machine up the Internet, otherwise known as the World's Most Efficient Means of Procrastination Ever. Way more effective than television. Sometimes TV sucks (how much E!TV can one person take before they go mad and set themselves on fire?). TV is a fleeting fling, the Internet is forever.

Speaking of the internet, I caught a snippet of last night's Back to the Future Marathon. It was a scene from part II where Marty McFly gets a glimpse of his future deadbeat self, his bratty kids, and his futuristic middle-class home. The future's speediest means of communication according to Steven Spielberg's 80s self? Fax machines in every room. Hilarious. I am told that the only reason HP & co. still manufacture fax machines is to serve the developping world, which hasn't fully caught up to the wonders of the Internet yet. It's amazing to think that the Internet has only been ubiquitous for ten years or so. Can you imagine your life without it now?

What I'm reading now: Going Coastal by Wendy French

Next on the list: A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. The author was on Jon Stewart not too long ago, and is an exceptionally remarkable man (not to mention, total hottie). I cannot wait to read this one.

After that, a chick-lit I've been wanting to read forever. How Nancy Drew Saved My Life by Lauren Baratz-Logted. I also was a huge fan of Nancy Drew. The series was one of the first I ever read as a kid.

And now? Back to the writing.