Where do you Write?

When an audience of newbies convenes to imbibe the wisdom of an established writer, he/she is often asked, “What’s your process?”

Many things are interwoven in this be-all question:

are you a plotter or a pantser (or, like me, a plodder)what time of day do you writedo you engage in re-writes constantly or wait until the end of the day/manuscript(fill in the blank)I believe the place one writes is an important part of the equation…

Many writers convene at a nearby coffee shop, using their laptop as their writing tool of choice. I prefer to remain at home, in the silence of my home office, rather than decamp to a coffee shop where I’m known and likely to be distracted by people and sights and incidents. BTW, I know of no one who writes their stories longhand these days. If you do, tell me so in the comments.

I like to use my laptop with the built-in grammar and spellchecks, components of WORD. I’ve added Writer Pro as an writing aid, too. I don’t need the dictionary or thesaurus – I need the curbs on my over-reliance on ellipses…  and exclamation points. (ha!)

The drawback of the laptop is its power to distract. I might be busy about the task of writing something sensible and useful and shining light into dark corners, and then succumb to the temptation of sending Google into other dark corners (never the dark web for me), such as the mystery of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance and how much was Howard Hughes worth and has anyone located the original Ten Commandment tablets and was Beowulf a real person and did Teddy Roosevelt kill any beasts on his African safaris or did he only pose with a rifle, and was J.D. Salinger happy after he vanished from public view, and is it true that Albert Einstein was unable to sail a small boat, and how soon as a rule do famous people become unknown.

Yes, Goggle has everything!

Including ChatGPT, but I vow to never use it to write a piece for me.