By contract, I am required to supply my publisher with a photo for the back-of-the-book author shot. No problem. I e-mail my editor the photo I had professionally taken a few years ago and that I will probably still be using when I'm 90. It's lovely, she says, but given that this is a cat book, might I have some pictures of myself with my cats we could use?
I do not. Not only do our cats not cooperate in the picture-taken process, they actively sabotage it. Plus...
In an attempt to thaw out my permanently frozen fingers, I picked up a pair of fingerless gloves this week from Target. (NOTE: Gloves do not resemble chain mail as much as the accompanying photo may lead you to believe.) No go. The gloves, while warm, are too thick and bulky to allow for ease of typing and writing. A friend sent me a link to a site that sells fingerless cashmere gloves for $25, plus S&H. Since my $12.99 el-cheapo gloves were a bust, I may have to investigate.
Meanwhile, I'll hang out with my fingerless Target gloves and hope 80's Madonna-inspired fashion cames roaring back into vogue.
My apologies for the slow blog week. The days keep slipping away from me. For about two weeks now I've been walking around thinking, "By tomorrow I'll be caught up." You'd think at some point I'd clue in that I'm lying to myself, but it turns out I'm pretty gullible...
What have I been up to? Survey says:
Where would I be without friends? The reason I have a Mac is because my friend Chris Laney insisted I would be happy with nothing less. He was right. I have an ongoing love affair with my never-locks-up-or-breaks-down-or-pops-up-a-million-annoying-windows Mac laptop. And now Chris has introduced me to the best Mac application ever.
Mac Freedom. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . .
In a nutshell, Mac Freedom "... is an application that disables networking on an Apple computer for up to eight hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create. At the end of your selected offline period, Freedom re-enables your network, restoring everything as normal."
When you open the program, it asks you how long you wish to remain offline. Today, for example, I entered 120 minutes and hit BEGIN. Boom! I was offline, and the only way I could get back on would have been to reboot my computer. That's the key, for me at least. I can disable e-mail but I know with a click of the button, I can be right back on. There were a couple of times while working this morning that I wanted to toggle over to the web and look something up. But not enough to restart my computer. Instead, I made a note for later and kept working. And got so much done. I left my desk for a few minutes at one point and when I sat back down, I started to check email--out of habit--before realizing I didn't have the option. So I jumped right back into my work.
The program is free, although a $10 donation is appreciated if you like the app. I can't speak for other professions, but I think it's a must for every writer. Thanks Chris, for the heads up.
Cheers,
Dena
Author. Humorist. Fitness fanatic. Control freak (working on it). Mentor. Klutz. All-around decent human being.
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