End of an Era

It’s come time to retire my little old laptop. It overheats, turns off and on on its own command, is the equivalent weight of a pile of bricks, and despite multiple battery replacements over the years it can last only about fifteen minutes when not plugged into an outlet. I want to retire it now before one day it just decides not to turn on any more and I have a major melt down.

I’ve been thinking this for a while, but with NaNoWriMo looming, my fear that the computer would just call it quits in the middle of a massive write-in session has been keeping me up at night (I kid you not).

My little old computer was a Christmas gift in December 2008 when I was a sophomore in college. That was very nearly SIX years ago! As I’m sifting through the computer, making sure everything is exported and archived to an external hard drive, I started keeping tally of how many books I wrote on this old keyboard and I realized something:

I wrote my very first novel on this computer.

I mean, the first novel I consider my “real” novel attempt. There were of course novels in middle school and high school I muddled in and a few I even finished, but the book I wrote for independent study, a MG historical, in spring 2009 was the very first experience of me sitting down with a plan and a novel-writing goal, the first time I produced something (nearly) novel-length worth sharing with others.  All told, I’ve written nearly five books on this thing:

1. 35,000-word historical MG (spring semester, 2009)

2. 54,000-word YA (2011; first 4,000 written as college creative writing capstone final, 50,000 to completion for my very first NaNoWriMo win!)

3. 15,000-word non-fiction (2012; my published Byberry State Hospital book!)

4. 66,000-word YA dystopian (started in NaNoWriMo 2012, finished in December 2013)

5. 12,000-word YA (NaNoWriMo 2013 attempt)

6. 40,000-word current WIP, MG (started in January 2014)

We’ll just combine #5 and #6 together and call it one full book, shall we?

Let’s not even mention all the short stories and extremely lengthy history papers written on this thing. It’s seen a lot of miles/accrued a huge lifetime word count! [pats affectionately]

And may the new computer, a slim, sleek MACBOOK AIR (I am fangirl dancing inside…it is SO LIGHT) last as long and help me write the next five awesome books! Anyone want to join me for NaNo for the first 50,000-word stretch on this new keyboard and cheer each other on? :]

How many book-shaped things have you written on your current computer?