Final Sprint

I feel as if I’ve been sprinting to the finish of Lord Quillifer forever.  Up till now, with every page I added, the finale seemed to have receded farther out of sight, but now I think I’ve got a handle on it.  I’ve written the last big action scene, I’ve written the last big revelation scene, and now all I’ve got is the denouement, which is a collection of short scenes and shouldn’t take long.

But I’m still in a race, this time with my three-year-old MacBook Pro.  It’s a dreadful machine, with a very annoying (and very cheap) keyboard, an enormous touchscreen that I’m always hitting by mistake, or dragging a sleeve across, which causes the cursor to leap about, and Spotlight Search, some kind of search window that’s always popping up when I don’t want it, and which I then have to take the time to make go away.  (It just popped up as I was typing this.  It’s malevolent, I tell you, malevolent.)

The butterfly switch keyboard is by now infamous, and mine has reached the stage where keys are leaping off the machine like popcorn.  I fish around, find them, then stick them back on. So far that’s working.

Despite being called “Pro,” the machine is not for serious work.  It’s for gaming, or editing cute cat videos, or posting your latest selfie to Facebook.  It’s certainly not intended for someone who has to write millions of words during the lifetime of the machine.

And yes, I know I could plug in a keyboard, but then with a second keyboard added it wouldn’t be a laptop anymore, would it?  I’d have to put the thing on a table or a desk, and quite frankly I’ve got used to working with a machine on my lap while I sit in a semi-reclined position on my easy chair.

So who will win the race?  Will I finish the book, or will my laptop fall apart before I can write “The End.”

Any bets, either way?