Writing novels with a partner has one tiny potential problem
when one lives in Wisconsin and the other in Texas. These locations could seem
as far away as the North Pole to the South. But our polar opposites vanished
when we enjoyed our first writing session via Skype a couple of weeks after our
biannual in-person visit in Wisconsin (where, as you may have read in our last
blog post, we played more than we wrote). Now Roz is here to tell you: Skype rocks.
Okay, this is not news. We could (make that SHOULD) have been doing
this for years already, when gasoline was still under three bucks a gallon. But
I have to be honest and admit that Patty, the brilliant techie of our duo, had
to drag me kicking and denying into the Skype world. After the great success, I
was embarrassed it had taken me so long to agree to it.
Nevertheless, I was now ready. My webcam securely hooked to
the edge of my monitor, staring down at me like a third eye, I downloaded the Skype
software and was ready to begin. The download was a breeze. First of all, it’s
free, and so what if you have to go through a lot of gyrations to reject offers
from several companies that promise to sweep your computer of bugs every one
and a half seconds, plus clean up after itself? It’s free! Too bad it
couldn’t promise to do the same for my kitchen.
After a couple of landline phone calls to each other to
assure we were ready to go, Patty’s face
miraculously filled my screen, almost life-size. It took several minutes of
congratulating each other that everything appeared to be working correctly, and
then we began to work in earnest.
We tightened our plot; we read aloud to each other,
correcting the inevitable problems with dialogue and descriptions; and we did a
lot of laughing, as we always do when we are “working.”
During the call, I happened to be dog-sitting my friend’s
15-year-old cocker spaniel, Bailey. Patty, who was at her daughter’s home in
Green Bay at the time, was babysitting real children
and also had custody of Hank, their gorgeous yellow Labrador. Inevitably, Bailey and Hank wandered into view
of the webcams. Hank barked loudly, but Bailey ignored him. To be fair, I should
add that Bailey is almost totally deaf, and Hank’s vision wouldn’t qualify him
as a seeing-eye dog,so I doubt they were able to appreciate the wonder of Skype
as much as Patty and I did.
All in all, I was thrilled with the whole process. Definitely
something we will do on a regular basis. Only problem is how to end the session.
I just didn’t want to say goodbye.
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