SueAnn Porter

My friend Delia loaned me her old computer. It does NOT have wi-fi, which is actually a blessing. I can write and not be interrupted by Facebook updates and spam emails.

It’s also a big help because my husband needs the new computer on the weekends, for work-related tasks.

What I do is write free-form, kind of a brain-dump of whatever is swirling in my mind. Overwriting, it’s sometimes called. Then I hit the thesaurus (Shift and F7 key), and write down every associated word that has a similar meaning.

When I finish a thought, I click over to the Solitaire game.

Oh yes, I get distracted by Solitaire. But wait a minute, it’s a game that needs logical thinking skills. My brain is thinking, moving, swirling while I am moving the cards around the screen.

Then I flip back to my word processing document and write. I am able to save the document to a thumb-drive or whatever they are calling them these days, and upload it to the ” new” computer, save the document there and also print it out.

I’ve been dealing with some super-deep baggage that I need to extract from my being, both for healing of self, and healing from my food addiction. Addiction. Yes, I said it. Food stuffs the emotions back down.  I am trying to peel back the layers, and like peeling an onion, it brings tears to the eyes. So I type type type as fast as I can when I am able to attach a word to the emotions. Then, when I don’t think I can stand anymore, I flip over to Solitaire and put the red 4 on the black 5.

I’ve gotten as far as uploading my word documents and sending them to the print queue, but I haven’t yet printed them out. I’m not ready to read this stuff and digest it again just yet. But soon I will, and I will be able to weave it into the story that I have already started writing. This brain-dump info will fill in the holes in the story that wouldn’t yet make sense to a reader.

I don’t know if this is how the great novelists write–Stephen King, James Paterson, etc. Probably not. I know a lot of the classic novelists drank heavily–which is a temptation when you are dealing with raw peeled emotion with rubbed in onion juice. I’m tempted to eat, personally. Not onions, but junk food.

And so, thank you Delia, for loaning me the “old” computer. You are helping me on levels that I did not think were possible.

And whenever I finish the book, whether self-published or traditional, I won’t forget that you were there in the nitty-gritty not so pretty times.