Drinking the Koolaid

I've been challenged to get another entry written this week. It's been wild with activity—good activity.

Yesterday I traveled to a lunch meeting but it consumed the entire work day. I had more than a little concern about how this commitment was going to throw off some of my writing production. I've signed up for some steep deadlines recently and need to be producing each day to meet those deadlines. It's one of those necessities in the writing life.

While my non-technical wife thinks I have a bunch of gadgets, I'm a relatively gadget-free person. I don't have a blackberry or an ipod or some the other more common gadgets. Several years ago, other writers were telling me about their great accomplishments on their AlphaSmart. I went to ebay and purchased one. I tried it a few times but never invested enough energy to learn how to transfer the material to my computer or any of the simple features in it. That barrier changed this week.

For my day trip, I pulled down my AlphaSmart and tucked it into my travel bag. During each flight when they sounded that bell to allow electronic gadgets, I reached under my seat and pulled out my AlphaSmart and began to pound the keyboard. The keyboard feels better than my laptop and it's a funky-looking thing with only four lines of type--but oh, can you crank on it!

This morning, I transferred the material to my desktop computer in a matter of seconds. It's a matter of taking off my printer cable and plugging it into the hole on the AlphaSmart. Then I open a document in Microsoft Word and hit the send button. Each file pulls right into my desktop. I created several different ones and combined them into a single double-spaced document which was nine pages. My initial draft isn't perfect yet this entire project is much further along than if I had not written anything--which is normally the case for me.

It looks like something out of the stone ages but who cares? I went over to ebay and typed in a search for "AlphaSmart" and you can purchase these machines for very little money. My AlphaSmart has done little for me tucked on a shelf in my closet. It's like many other things that only pay if you use them. I'm a convert and have drunk the koolaid on this one.

In less than a week, I head to Los Angeles for Mega Book Marketing University. Instead of a bunch of books, I'm going to slip my AlphaSmart into my laptop bag and use it on the flights. I'll have my laptop along on the LA trip. Now I can see why my writer friends have been raving about this gadget.