My family went downhill skiing this weekend. The first time I ever skied I was 23 which is much too late. When we went skiing last year, I worried the entire week before we went, I was terrified as I was skiing, and only relaxed when the weekend was over.

This year, I planned to stay in the ski lodge and write while everyone else skied. I brought my laptop and had a chapter already outlined in my head. And then tragedy struck! I had forgotten to bring the cord to plug the laptop into the wall. The battery is fickle and unreliable. I had to write longhand.

If there were no computers, I would not be a writer. For most of my youth and early adulthood, I wrote on paper and never finished anything. I edit a lot, and going back and re-writing and crossing out sections and inserting sections creates more mess than masterpiece. After a while, I would look at my project, unable to understand what was going on, what was meant to be there, where it was supposed to go, and end up throwing out the whole thing.

I did write on paper in the ski lodge. I got that chapter out, although the pages are a total disaster. Later today I will sort through them and type up what I can decipher–editing as I go. Then, I can keep on editing in a clean and organized manner. Aren’t computers wonderful?