The author and the subject, in their natural habitat.

Writers have a long and storied history of being mercurial creatures. We’re moody, we tend towards solitary behaviors, and our passions run hot, even if writing has nothing to do with it. We also get distracted by shiny objects. And the Internet is full of shiny objects.

Modern writers do a great deal to curtail their distractions. Some have special rituals they enact. Others put together special areas in which to work. The Hemingwrite was kickstarted succesfully because writers need the sort of mental isolation provided by a device that facilitates writing but it still cut off from the big distractions.

For me, that device is known as the Craptop.

The Craptop came from the old office, released from their IT department when it outlived its usefulness. It came with a copy of Windows XP, but that too started to give up the ghost on me. This was before the holidays, the travel, and everything else that happened. After some trial and error over this past weekend, I finally got it up and running, with no problems from the operating system (which is now Xubuntu) and a nice, stable user experience.

I know ther are some people who would disagree with me, in that the Craptop has trouble running more than one application at a time with any sort of alacrity or smoothness. However, for my purposes, this is perfect. The Craptop can connect to wifi, facilitating loading of files from the Dropbox and backing up my work, but the ways in which it runs means there’s little chance that I would be opening a web browser while I’m working on my writing. I have ways to get media in my ears (tablet, phone, etc), and the Craptop can go just about anywhere.

Well, anywhere with an outlet. The Craptop needs a new battery, since right now its charge is only held for about a half hour. I have an old-fashioned breifcase for carrying it, and with several of my bags developing holes from strain, I see a Bag of Holding in my future. Or perhaps something nice from Chrome.

Anyway. Say hello to the Craptop.

It and I will be downstairs after lunch, making words happen.