Writing Contingencies for Sandy

Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on the metro-DC area. It’s hard to tell from the various reports exactly when the worst will hit. It looks like sometime overnight or early tomorrow. In any case, it’s been raining pretty heavily for a while now and the winds are picking up.

Given that it’s hard to say how we will be affected by the hurricane, I have made some contingency plans in order to keep writing throughout the storm.

1. If we don’t lose power

This, of course, would be ideal. But with a hurricane of this size, I suspect it is unlikely. So long as power is on, I have access to my work laptop and my new iMac and it’s business-as-usual in terms of writing.

2. If we lose power for a while

Both my iPad and iPhone are fully charged and my BlueTooth keyboard has fresh batteries. Should we lose power, I have the ability to continue writing, using the iaWriter app, for as long as 10 hours. Of course, I’ll probably also use the iPad for other things, but I don’t imagine getting 10 hours of writing done before the power would come back on. That said…

3. If we lose power for an extended period of time

I have a contingency plan even if we lose power for a long time. I illustrate this plan in the photo I took of my desk ten minutes ago:

Yes, that is a legal pad and pen sitting by my keyboard. Actual paper. It’s shocking, I know, but sometimes, we have no choice but to fall back to quaint forms of technology when our needs are dire. There is no shame in this. There are times when paper is necessary and an extended power outage would be one of those times. It might be argued that I could simply hold-off writing until the power is restored, and thereby avoid the need to resort to paper. My response to that is cackling laughter. Me? Hold off writing? Surely you jest.

Incidentally, that yellow pad and pen are part of my Hurricane emergency kit. I added them as essential items that every writer should have tucked away in the event that some calamity makes it impossible to write otherwise. Because if I couldn’t write, I might explode.