A Slip of the Keyboard (3 page)

Midnight …

Stare at screen. Vaguely aware right hand has hit keys to open new file. Start breathing very slowly.

Write 1,943 words.

Bed.

For a day there, thought we weren’t going to make it.

The Independent
,
9 July 1993

I remember my first portable computer. It weighed fifteen pounds. The power supply was separate and in many ways resembled a small brick. The damn thing nearly killed me.

The next one was a mere eight pounds, although there was still a (smaller) brick. I thought that was light until I had to run across an airport carrying it.

It dawned on me what was wrong. The important thing about portable computers, the common element, the nub or crux of the whole ethos, as it were, is that you’re supposed to be able to carry them. What’s the good of a machine that won’t fit inside a briefcase
a
long with all the other things you want to carry in there
? Even eight pounds isn’t portable. Eight pounds is an item of luggage.

It always puzzled me why the weight of portable machines wasn’t the first thing mentioned in any review. It tends to be in the small print even now, way down the page. This is because reviewers get hypnotized by shiny discs and glittery screens. Let them carry them around for a day, say I. Let them hoick them around so they can get on with their work in studio green rooms and hotels and the backs of cabs.

I grew up reading science fiction and there were always these guys carrying pocket computers which could talk and keep track of their diary and run whole planets. They never got hernias carrying the things. I didn’t see why I should either. I was suffering from the opposite of future shock, whatever that is. Future suction? I don’t want arms reaching to my knees, but I like to have a computer around.

I entered the palmtop world.

Jargon crops up everywhere. Once there were big machines that sat on desks, and there were portables (more or less). Now there are ultraportables and subnotebooks and personal digital assistants and palmtops and pocketbooks. They’re all very loosely defined by size and weight and the whim of the person describing them. Basically, they’re all small and light.

They all occupy the twilight zone between laptops (the aforesaid portables, although now the bulk of new machines do quite a lot more than the ones I’ve had and weigh in at around six pounds plus quite a small brick) and small calculators.

The first acquisition was the Atari Portfolio, several years ago. It weighed in at about a pound, and came with its own built-in software, including the usual “electronic Filofax” yuppie bait of simple word processor, calculator, spreadsheet, and phone book. The word processor wasn’t too bad; I typed tens of thousands of words on it, admittedly not very fast. But it wasn’t perfect.

Rule Number One is: Weight is important. Rule Two is: What else do you need to buy?

Sir Clive Sinclair was able to sell the first sub-£99 computer by redefining what a computer was. It didn’t need a dedicated monitor, or internal mass storage of data or a standard communications port, or a keyboard fit for steady typing—not if you were prepared to hook it into the TV, store programs on a normal tape recorder, and type very slooowly and carefully. It didn’t need more than one kilobyte of memory. So it didn’t get it.

Since then I’ve always been wary of machines that need extra bits before they start becoming more than a useful toy. The Portfolio needed an add-on module if you wanted to increase memory to something closer to an acceptable amount. It needed a comparatively large plug-in module before it could print, and another one if you wanted a serial port. Without them, everything stayed locked in.

The theory was these bits stayed at home. But I do a lot of typing when I’m away from home for long periods, and you get very nervous if you can’t print out or dump stuff onto another machine.

They also caused trouble at airport security. Security men could accept the basic machine, but the box full of mysterious plastic prolapses upset them. “Show us this working,” they said. “Certainly,” I said, “please get me an electrical outlet and a laser printer.”

I found too many small, light machines that had the word “(optional)” in their descriptions. (Optional) means you’re going to have to pay to do what you want.…

After two years of looking, I ended up with, and indeed am typing this on, the Olivetti Quaderno. It cost me almost £600 and must have been one of the first on sale last year (pioneers are penalized; my agent bought one a few months later and they threw in a free add-on disc drive, and now there’s been a sizeable further price cut amid reports of a new souped-up model). What it is, simply, is this: it’s the desktop PC I bought
in 1987, shrunk to A5 size, one inch thick and weighing a little over two pounds. I’ve never weighed the little power supply and battery charger—I’ve never really noticed it weighing anything very much. It certainly fits in my briefcase. I can lose it in my briefcase. But most importantly, it runs all my software, accumulated over years of trial and error.

It runs memory-resident programs like Sidekick and the in-comparable Info Select. It runs WordPerfect 4.2 (the classic version). I don’t have to look at a screen like a letterbox, or be forced to use someone else’s idea of the “right” software. It’s got a twenty-megabyte hard disk, which means you can write a novel on it and have it all there, all in one go. There’s half of one on it now.

People say: Yes, but what about the
keyboard
? Well, it’s better than any other similar-sized one I tried—Hewlett-Packard’s HP 95LZ, an otherwise interesting machine, practically had calculator buttons—and I can touch-type on it.

People say: Ah, but can it run Windows? Not in any way that a committed Windows user would accept. Windows demands high-resolution screens and a 386 processor and a fair amount of RAM and a user who is on a salary so that they can pass away those lengthy office hours by fiddling with the colours or selecting super new icons. I don’t need that. And the Quad’s screen is murky—there’s no backlight, so lighting has to be reasonably good.

But it’s real and it’s here now. It’s not a toy. I can carry around work in progress and my diary and the spreadsheet, all versions I’m familiar with and which gently move like a tide between the Quad and the office machine. The screen, apart from the touch of murk, looks like a smaller version of the one I’m familiar with. If I really had to, I could use it all the time.

Good-bye bricks. This one is
portable
.

I didn’t actually use it on Ayers Rock. But I jolly well could have done, if I’d wanted to.

Contribution for The Word, London’s Festival of Literature, 2000

I like the fortuitous onomatopoeia of words for soundless things.
Gleam, glint, glitter, glisten
 … they all sound exactly as the light would sound if it made a noise.
Glint
is sharp and quick, it glints,
and if an oily surface made a noise it would go
glisten
. And
bliss
sounds like a soft meringue melting on a warm plate.

But I’ll plump for:

SUSURRATION

… from the Latin
susurrus
, “whisper” or “rustling,” which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a hushed noise. But it hints of plots and secrets and people turning to one another in surprise. It’s the noise, in fact, made just after the sword is withdrawn from the stone and just before the cheering starts.

Foreword to the
Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2006
(2005)

I bought my first copy of the
W&AYB
(secondhand) when I was about thirteen or fourteen. Sorry. But I’d just spent ten shillings on a very good secondhand copy of
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
, which was a big bite out of available funds. In some dimly understood way, I felt it was one of the things you had to have in order to be a writer, and that somehow professionalism would leak from it and be painlessly absorbed by me.

I read it solemnly.

Was it useful? Well, yes—but I have to say that some of the basics had already entered my life via science fiction fandom. Most writers in the field were fans once; many fans aspire to be writers one day. And so, at a major science fiction convention (and long before literary festivals became the new rock ’n’ roll) you’d find established authors, there at their own expense, explaining the basics to a hall full of hopefuls. The process is known as “paying forward.”

I took notes. I’ve never had occasion to use one magnificent tip from a well-known author, but I pass it on anyway: “Keep an eye on the trade press. When an editor moves on,
immediately
send your precious MS to his or her office, with a covering letter addressed to said departed editor. Say, in the tones of one engaged in a cooperative effort, something like this: ‘Dear X, I was very pleased to receive your encouraging letter indicating your interest in my book, and I have made all the changes you asked for.…’ Of course they won’t find the letter. Publishers can never find anything. But at least someone might panic enough to read the MS.”

Having read and listened to all the good advice, I then handed over the MS of my first novel to a local small press publisher, just because I met him one day and he seemed a decent type. He liked it. I was totally unknown and he’d never published fiction before, so it didn’t make much money. Nor did the next two. The fourth title was the first book in the Discworld series. It didn’t exactly walk out of the shops, but it crawled quite briskly and with every sign that it was determined to make it to its feet. Transworld hesitated, and then published it in paperback. A few years later, I hired my former publisher as my agent, and life became rather crowded.