Getting to Know you.

I've been on the internet for years now. And life without it is pretty damn awful. If I don't have access to it I get irritable, grumpy and start trembling with SIWS (Severe Internet Withdrawal Symptoms).

It's like my cell phone. How did life get conducted before cell phones? Did I have to write down what size gizmo I was supposed to get BEFORE I got to the shop? (And not ring the Lord of the Manor to ask what color he wanted.) And did I have to walk for miles to find which shop sells the gizmo? (As opposed to looking it up on the internet.) Was there life before Ebay? (Which begs the question is there life after Ebay?? - but that's another issue.)

I wrote a story set in 1951. It was so hard. I needed the internet and cell phone to conduct the heroine's life. And then horror! I had to grasp the concept - there wasn't even computer!

It would be easier to write a story set in 1860. I know there wasn't computer and internet and cell phones then. I know they wore crinolines and blushed at their heros and said things like, "Sir, you are not a gentleman!" such as Scarlett did in the library directely after sending a vase into oblivion over the sofa Rhett had been listening to her declaration of love to Ashley. BUT

1951 is modern. It's a time when television was a baby. When aeroplanes flew overhead ferrying passengers to and fro. It was a time when we all started growing up with the things we know today. Refrigerators, a car in the garage. Writing a manuscript set in this time demands a consciousness and some exacting research.

And it's also funny that I'm sitting here in Coward's Castle writing what I think today. What am I doing today... well if you want to know:

Phone call from friend. Her husband is going to have to have a hemerroid removed by operation. She's worried.
Phone call from neighbour. Coward's Castle might be extending upstairs. We share Cowards Castle in a terrace type situation in the inner city and will probably share the burden of misery, expense etc., of a second floor. (Need more space for the ancestral portraits, ghosts, dogs etc.)
Phone call from husband. Best snow since Global Warming was invented.

Okay that's the phone.

Internet.
Emails. 10 today including two from good friends in Nigeria who insist on sharing their wealth with me. I'm generous to a fault. No I whisper as I sadly delete their kind offers. God bless you my friends but I insist you keep it all to yourself.
Critique group: A group of writers with whom I laugh, cry, commiserate and rant every day.
Look at boards of interest groups -( my hobby)

Writing.
Edit a story called "The Securement of Greggie Donald" which will appear in an anthology before Xmas.
Article for a magazine in New York for which I write on a regular basis. I've been putting both of the above off until the last minute. But that's a very me thing. Deadlines make me focus. Far deadlines give me optimism and space.

And what's on my ipod? Mine is a pretendy one. The music is inside my head. It's the words of a song and it's from THE KING AND I. It's called:

GETTING TO KNOW YOU....
Getting to know all about you...
Getting to like you,
Hoping that you like me...

etcetera etcetera etcetera