The Joys of Modern Technology

Amazing isn’t it? Just when you need the computer to work, the printer to communicate with the computer and all that incredibly clever modern technology to just get on with the job, that’s when they have a breakdown.

This coming Sunday is a big day for me and for a group of my writing friends. We will meet at my house at 7.30am, ready to start writing a book for 10 – 14 year olds when we are given the parameters at 8am, via the computer of course. ‘Write a Book in a Day’ raises funds for The Kids Cancer Project; the money goes to research into childhood cancer and the books (written by lots of different groups like us) are given to children in hospitals all around Australia. Each writing group is given a different set of characters, a setting and an issue, plus five random words. By 8pm on Sunday our book, complete with illustrations, must be emailed to the organisers and the hard copy has to be posted on Monday.

I’m telling you this so that you will understand why I panicked last Friday evening when my laptop did a meltdown. I couldn’t actually read the message because the screen went dark blue, then black in seconds, but it was something like ‘There is no link.’

Continue reading