The thing is though, from the guy who complained about his latest shipment of goose quills always splintering to me muttering under my breath about Bill Gates, I hope we're not making excuses for our work. What kind of writer would I be if I said it was the fault of my software that my work sucked? A poor excuse for one in my opinion. It's the poor craftsman that blames their tools for the job badly done.

What does drive me crazy is the that these so called labour-saving tools and assets for writers take so much time and energy away from the actual creative process, even when everything works out the way it's supposed to. They have you jumping through so many hoops to accomplish simple tasks that you are almost worn out before you begin your day's work.

For one reason or another a great many of us have only a limited amount of time we can use for our craft. When you end up depleting that time on trying to take care of the ancillary stuff that is involved with those things designed to make your life easier, it can leave you especially frustrated. There's lots to love about modern technology and what it has done to make my life as a writer easier (I'd be lost without spell check), but at the same time there are occasions when its capacity to frustrate far exceed its capabilities to help.

In the long run, of course, I'm still in a far better situation then any of my predecessors, but that doesn't prevent weeks like the one just past from making me seriously wonder about what sort of karmic debt I'm paying off by having to use the equipment of these modern times.