It’s been a weird last day or so, and since it’s connected to my writing, you get to hear about it.
Back in October, my laptop fell off the end table I normally place it when not in use, and it fell on the charger port with the cord in it. That broke the end of the charger, and seemed to affect the inside mechanics, too, which, the way my laptop is designed, would make it somewhat costly (at least $100) to repair.
But I bought a new charger right away, and I’ve had a roller coaster of a time when it would charge just fine (and stay charged while in use), or would not charge when alone, and certainly not when I worked on it. This led to me switching to a different device for Nano, which caused problems for listening to music (since I have plenty on my laptop) and other issues that proved navigable, but still annoying. But I made it work.
Cut to yesterday, when, after a lengthy time away from critiques in my writing group (more on that later), I was doing the final pass on what I planned to submit for my turn. The laptop wasn’t charging while in use, but it said I had more than an hour left of battery. Then, shortly thereafter (I think it was about 10 minutes), it suddenly decided to die on me. Okay. That was fine. It was still early enough, and I didn’t have too much to finish, to submit on time. I left it charging, or so I hoped, and exercised a little in the meantime.
As it turned out, it didn’t charge while I did this. I’ve had issues with it needing to be in a certain position, and not always the same when it’s been finicky, to get it to power up, so I thought that’s what was up. But when I came back in the morning, and it was only at 5%, while not the best, I thought maybe I was having some success. I left it charging some more, and hoped for the best, but prepared to email the document to myself to work on a different device should that prove necessary.
However, it wasn’t making any progress, and only gave me a “Critical Battery” level warning before powering back down. When it kept doing that, I appealed to my writing group, and, thankfully, the person who would have been up after me had her piece ready, so we swapped places, and I have another 2 weeks to get my piece ready.
With that taken care of, I decided to troubleshoot why I was having such difficulty getting the laptop to charge. Was it because the battery had fully drained, and it couldn’t get much, if any, juice back to it? What if the cord, which is in two segments that plug into another, had come loose, even if it rarely comes with me when I travel, and I had no reason to suspect, when it was fine yesterday charging for most of the day?
You can probably guess that it was indeed loose, but only by a little bit. But as soon as I adjusted it, the light signifying charging came on, and stayed on. And, eventually, it changed from orange to blue, and sure enough, it was fully charged when I went to turn it on again.
I feel silly. Almost as silly as I did when I stacked my laptop on top of something unstable to have it fall and break in the first place. I could have finished my piece last night, and not have had to deal with all the annoyance in the meantime. Although it does give me hope that I can have my laptop charging better in the future, and a reminder that sometimes simple solutions are the best ones.
Anyway, since I haven’t updated in the past few weeks, some news regarding my writing group. We took November off for Nano, and then decided to sit December out, too, in part because of when a piece would be needed to be submitted, and because of the Christmas party we shared with our sister group. And then January, we gave some literary salons a try, one that met on the same night we did (if every other week instead of weekly).
But we returned just fine last week, and not only had a good critique for the person who submitted, but we went over a charter for the group, even though we’ve been in existence for over 3 years. It was, however, a way to reset things, as attendance and doing the “homework” of critique notes had been allowed to slide, and Midwestern politeness had made it difficult to broach the subject and get us back on track.
That means there’s some optimism that we’re all on the same page, or will be, with regard to how the group is supposed to function. It also means that if someone isn’t fulfilling their role in the group, there’s an established protocol for that, so it isn’t personal, but based on their choice not to do the things required of them.
Finally, I’d like to address something I thought I’d be doing by now in the year, but haven’t started as planned. I’ve recognized that I’m in somewhat of a creative slump, which in part was compacted by my failure to get too far in 12 Months, 12 Genres 2 (Electric Novel-oo) last year. If it hadn’t been for various silly rewards keeping me going, I might not have finished Nano for the first time ever. That’s how drained I was.
So, that means my attempt to finish projects started last year, spending some more time and feeling some less pressure, has floundered for now. Reviewing what I planned to submit before battery issues struck (and plan to use as the basis of a rewrite during Nano this year) did help some, but it’ll still take a while. Maybe doing Camp Nano in April and/or July could also be a kick in the right direction.
It’s weird to have very few writing goals ahead of me for the moment, but I hope to get back into that soon enough. Since I’m still part of some writing groups, that’s helping, but whether I get closer to a return to form, or slip further away into a creative desert, we’ll have to wait and see.