It was a sunny, crisp morning in southern Vermont. I’d just driven twenty-five miles of winding mountain roads to get to the office I rent with my husband, a filmmaker, and I was excited for what lay ahead. I’d have the office to myself, and I had big plans. I was caffeinated and ready for a full, uninterrupted day of writing. As visions of inspired typing filled my head, I pulled into my parking spot, grabbed my bag, and—it was lighter than usual.
A hot wave of dread washed over me. For a fleeting moment I tried to convince myself I’d just forgotten my water or my lunch, either of which I could easily replace at the nearby café. But, alas, I opened the bag and saw that my water and lunch were there. My computer wasn’t. My portal to the productive day I had planned was at home, a half hour of mountainous terrain away.
I’d daydreamed about this mini retreat all week. I’d worked hard to finish my freelance writing early, in service of preserving this one full creative writing day. In my wild and precious block of eight uninterrupted hours, I planned to work on a grant application, with the hope of getting some funding for my next novel. I wanted to complete the novel’s outline and start drafting its opening pages, which would serve as my writing sample for the grant application. Without my laptop, my dreams of completing these artistic feats would be impossible.
Still in the parking lot, I ran through my options. I could drive home and get the computer, but that would mean losing a full hour of my hard-earned writing day. If I did that, I knew I’d arrive back at the office tired and frustrated. Another option was to forgo the office, drive home, and work there, but I knew my concentration would be shot. That’s why we have the office to begin with. It’s a sanctuary for those days when I really need uninterrupted time. This was one of those days.
There was, of course, a third option. I could go to the office and spend the day inside without my computer. This option felt, quite honestly, the least logical. What was a workday without my laptop? But I took a deep breath, and as I did, I don’t know how else to describe it—I felt a little spark inside. A day without my laptop had a potentially magical quality to it. It was like in Home Alone when Kevin realizes his family is gone and repeats, with a mischievous grin, “I made my family disappear.” I was suddenly taken by a curiosity about what kind of adventures I could get into without my computer.
I decided to go to the office, commit to the eight hours I’d promised myself, and see what happened.
As it turns out, the day was productive in ways I could not have anticipated. In fact, it wasn’t just productive; it was transformative. It changed my relationship to my creative work and set me on a path of engaging with my writing in ways I never had before—and perhaps never would have had I not forgotten my computer.
Before I get too far into a narrative of “roughing it,” I want to be very clear that I was not exactly stuck in a cave, writing with a quill by candlelight. I was in a spacious office with a couch and two desks. I had two notebooks, my phone, and an iPad. I even had Wi-Fi. I just didn’t have my laptop, and until I was forced to spend a day without it, I didn’t realize how much I had relied on it for every aspect of my writing life.
Without my usual computer screen, I turned to my notebooks. One is my catch-all “journal” notebook, and the other is reserved solely for brainstorming new fiction or creative nonfiction concepts, one page at a time. I have a ritual in which I start my workday with one of those one-page concept exercises, so I did that first. That felt normal and good, because it was already part of my routine. Then I moved from the desk to the couch with my catch-all notebook and started to dabble in bullet-pointing the outline I had intended to spend hours typing that day. This is where things started to feel weird.
As I scribbled my thoughts about my novel, I noticed that every few words a new thought would occur to me. Something to look up, check on. If I had my laptop, I knew what would happen next: an endless Google search, a new text to send, an e-mail inbox to obsessively refresh (I’d recently sent queries to agents about my first novel).
While working in my notebook, I felt like I was sitting in a forest, and every time I looked up from the notebook’s page, a new, sparkly path opened itself up in front of me, beckoning me to follow it. Those paths no doubt had rabbit holes to fall down at the end of them. Had I been on my computer, I would have stopped what I was doing and searched whatever that thought was urging me to look up or engage. And I probably wouldn’t have even noticed I was doing it. When I’m on my laptop, I move through browser tabs and windows with a fluidity that doesn’t necessarily present itself as distraction. But there with my notebook, I could see clearly how much of a distraction it would be if I were to stop what I was doing, pick up another device, and Google away.
Meanwhile, after some work on my bullet-point outline, a thought occurred to me that was indeed worth following. A friend had shown me once how she plotted out her year in a circle, with each slice of the pie representing one month of the year. It had stuck in my mind as an interesting way to plot out a novel. There were a few times when, sitting in front of my computer screen, I briefly considered trying it, but it had always seemed like it would require a lot of time and fuss with just a notebook and pen. I’d been trained to think of “productivity” as words on the page, not circles in a notebook. So I’d put off the task.
On that computer-free day, though, I got to work drawing my circle and dividing it into slices, each piece of the pie representing a different scene in the journey my protagonist would take throughout my book. I found some colored pencils and color-coded each slice to correspond with parts of the story: forward-trajectory narrative, flashback, secondary story line, and so on.
This turned out to be a helpful tool in terms of plotting my novel. But more than that, the act of creating it reminded me that—and forgive me for how basic this concept is despite my presenting it here as revelatory—writing is art. Writing is colored pencils in hand. It’s also learning to use a compass to make a perfect circle, which is something that took me a few tries. Writing is playing. It’s plotting. It’s dabbling. It’s not knowing what your word count is, because your notebook doesn’t keep track. It’s getting it all out. It’s expression for the sake of expressing. Writing is wild. Drafting with my computer is many of these things but not in their purest form. Drafting is drafting. It doesn’t make me feel like a kid in art class. This did make me feel that way, and it was exhilarating.
By noon, ecstatic, I was eager to figure out what else I could do on this computer-less day. What other tasks had I been putting off because they weren’t veiled in “productivity,” which really means, I was beginning to understand, that they didn’t produce the sound of my fingers tapping on my keyboard? Reading. Such an important aspect of being a writer, and yet I was always leaving it for nighttime, thinking it should be a leisurely endeavor. No, reading is part of my work. I sat down with the iPad and started reading the long list of short stories I’d saved for someday when I had time. And then I journaled about them: their themes, their meanings, what I liked and disliked. If this sounds like college, that’s exactly what it felt like. And guess what? In my current life, I spend a lot of time wishing I could go back to college, where I majored in dramatic writing and was allowed to focus on engaging with creativity. Turns out that ability to focus was inside me the whole time—not because of, and perhaps despite, my omnipresent laptop.
My wild and free day without my computer came to an end, of course, but as I walked to my car I felt utterly satisfied, like I had not just gotten work done, but I had discovered an entirely new way of working.
My laptop has not been banished from my workdays. It is, after all, a necessary tool for the modern writer. But that day of “solitude” taught me that the laptop can be just that: a tool. I can use it to compose and correspond. But I can also put it down, engage with my notebooks, sketch out my plots in colored pencil, read the amazing works of others, and end the day feeling like I was fully productive. The day reminded me that to be productive in creative work is not always quantifiable in terms of word counts and formatting but rather in time spent fully engaged in the work. Full engagement doesn’t necessarily mean words on the page. It can mean a lot of things—all of them valuable.
I’m happy to report that, in terms of the tools I use, my workdays are much more varied now than they were before my computer-free day. Reading is part of my workday, as is journaling about what I read and, when possible, sending notes of thanks and praise to the writers who wrote the pieces that spoke to me. My catch-all notebook has become a significant, irreplaceable feature in my workday. I use it to get in touch with my thoughts on any range of work tasks. When I finish composing on the computer, I spend time with the notebook, journaling about what I just wrote, why I wrote it, and what themes were present in what I just created. When I’m getting ready to write a piece like this one, I sit down and brainstorm longhand about it in the notebook before typing. And using the notebook as a tool throughout my workday, I’m remembering not to follow every magical path of curiosity that opens itself up in the forest of my mind while I’m working. Going down rabbit holes online can be fun. It can also be fruitlessly distracting. The notebook affords me fewer opportunities for that type of diversion.
I’ve often heard the advice that if you get blocked creatively, you should do something other than writing. Go for a walk, listen to music, visit a museum. Yes, yes, and yes. But my new favorite piece of writing advice is that for just one day see what it’s like to write, create, and simply be a writer without your usual tools. Find new ways in. You might discover radically different paths to connect to your muse and be inspired. And it might alter how you see your writing and your life as a writer.
Lauren Harkawik is a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction. Her work has been published in Cutleaf, Autofocus, Salt Hill, and Waffle Fried, among other journals. Her short story “Joey Button,” originally published in New Reader Magazine, is currently available worldwide in Short Édition’s Short Story Dispensers. Harkawik has a BFA in dramatic writing from Purchase College and was a 2024 recipient of an Artist Development Grant, supported by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment of the Arts. She is a previous recipient of a Town Arts Fund Grant from the Arts Council of Windham County. Harkawik lives in southern Vermont with her husband and daughters. Her writing can be read on her website, laurenharkawik.com.
Thumbnail credit: Garret Harkawik