Going Unplugged

First – thanks for all the lively discussion on yesterday's post. I do want to make it clear that I wrote this for exactly that reason—to discuss the role of an editor, and how an author should approach making changes based on editorial input. It's a matter of choosing one's battles, and in this case, as of the time I'm writing the, it's not even a battle, as I haven't sent in my edits yet.

And, here's the preliminary cover for the anthology. Doesn't look much like an assortment of cozy mysteries to me, which makes it all the more curious as to why readers wouldn't expect some "hard boiled" content.

I will send my editor my rationale for rejected her word choices. I will offer to find a new word that's mutually acceptable if she absolutely can't bear the idea of the word "ass" in any form being part of a book put out by her publishing house. (And it IS her publishing house.) There are plenty of other word choices, and I have faith we will find one that works for both of us if I can't use my original wording.

As you read this, I'm paying a much overdue visit to my parents in Los Angeles. It's a relatively short visit—I'll be back late Monday night—but I'm traveling light, so no laptop. My folks have computers, so I'm not totally cut off from the planet, but I'm certainly not going to be doing anything other than checking email once or twice a day.


So, what will that mean?

First, I'm not going to be visiting many websites or blogs, because I won't have my bookmarks and passwords, and it's not worth the trouble to bring them along, even if I do have more computer access than I anticipate.



I will set all my Yahoo groups to "special notices". Even digest gives me too much to deal with. Odds are that I won't bother going back to each group's website to see what I might have missed. (And that says something about how "important" all these messages really are.)

On the flip side, I won't be sending messages either, and I'll lose a lot of blog traffic because so many of my blog visitors come because they've seen an email in one of the groups with a click through to my post.

I won't be checking my sales figures for my e-books. This is probably a good thing, although if I get back and find they haven't changed, I'll be devastated. (Not really—but deep down, one hopes that if it's been 5 days since the last check, the sales figures have jumped more than they do when you check several times a day.)

Will I work on my WIP? Maybe. I keep a copy in my Dropbox, which I should be able to access from anywhere, and then when I get home, everything will be there. But since I'm not on deadline by any stretch of the imagination, I figure my time is much better spent with my parents.

How do you deal with being away from the Internet? Does your normal routine revolve around being connected? Do you suffer withdrawal? Or do you enjoy the brief trip back in time? And how do you deal with the backlog when you get home?