A writer's look at the writing industry and the Internet.

Last night was my new writing group’s annual dinner, and roughly three-quarters of the membership turned up, some with partners. It took place at a local “pub grub” chain pub where the building was nice, the food was nice and the service was… let’s just say that basic arithmetic induces terror in modern serving staff*.

Due to the unusual seating setup, I ended up seated by the secretary and his partner and was pretty much within shouting distance of two other people, so it made most of the evening a relatively close-knit chat. Though some of the people began moving around and chatting after the main course, so I got to chat with a few other people, too, and it was in general a lovely night.

If you are new to a writing group, or you have somehow not managed to attend your group’s annual dinner (or similar), I highly recommend you make the effort. If nothing else, you have a nice meal, a few drinks and the chance to socialise with people you have a great deal in common with… even if some of them write in genres that you don’t like or couldn’t imagine writing. The depth and breadth of the genres in my group is breathtaking, and I find each of them fascinating as I get to know the people who write in them.

If you’re a writer (or wannabe writer) and you’re still flying solo: join a writing group. It will broaden your horizons, expand your social circle, teach you a great deal about writing and how to read, and will provide opportunities that sitting at home are much less likely to do.

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* They wouldn’t let us pay individually, as there were thirty of us. They wouldn’t let us pay as a group, as the group’s official cheque book was a business-type account without a guarantee card. In the end we did manage to convince them to let us pay by tables, of which there were three. Then began the inevitable ‘But I only had the lentils!’ bean-counting common to groups the world over. When I’m King Of The World, it will become law that all group meals will be totalled up and divided evenly between everyone who participated in the meal. Seemples.

Flickr CC-BY timspalding

Last night I tried to use my Amazon Kindle 2 for the first time in a week or so, but took it out of the case in which I keep it to discover a dreaded new screen with the bold title: Critical Battery.

It said to charge it for a few minutes before I could use it and, as the Kindle only comes with a US mains charger, I use my iPhone’s mains-to-USB adapter to charge it beside the bed. Because the iPhone takes us back to mid-1990s in terms of battery life, I charge that every night and neglected the Kindle while I’ve been reading a couple of dead-tree books. So I put the Kindle on charge for 15 minutes then, when it still wouldn’t do anything, I left it to charge overnight and went back to reading the paperback version of Ernest Hemingway’s remarkable A Farewell to Arms (Amazon|Kindle|AmazonUK).

First thing this morning I discovered that the charging light had gone off sometime overnight (it’s supposed to go from amber while charging to green when fully charged). I did a few online searches and discovered various ways to kick it back to life, but none of them worked. One of the recommendations was to plug it into a computer USB slot and when I did this the USB drive connection came up straight away. A few minutes later the screen flashed a few times, I gave it a few more minutes, unplugged it, held the power switch for 15 seconds and released, then held the Home switch for 15 seconds. Presto fixo!

I’ve since been reading up on why I got such appalling battery life while the unit was switched off. (Manuals, pfft!) Sliding and releasing the power switch only puts the unit into Sleep mode, and it will still connect periodically via 3G to download any subscriptions, update page locations, bookmarks, etc.

To switch the device Off (as in for it not to consume any power), with the device still On you need to slide and hold the power switch until the screen goes blank.

Everything I’ve read indicates that this will maximise battery life while the device is not in use. And, unless you’re one of those people who have daily newspaper subscriptions or have multiple devices that you sync between regularly, who needs to have it synchronising while you’re asleep? It will do that anyway once you switch it back on next time, and will take all of about 15 seconds.

To maximise battery life while you’re using the device, disable the wireless (Menu > Turn Wireless Off). You can always enable it periodically to do a sync. This will give you a few weeks battery life when used with other battery-saving settings (small font to minimise page turning, not using the Kindle Store via the device, etc).

I very much like my Kindle 2 and, while it’s not perfect, it is another step towards an interesting future for publishing.

Update (7 April 2010): Since writing this article almost eight weeks ago — after which I switched the wireless off unless I was actually downloading content via wireless or USB (which I did 3-4 times) and switched the device Off (as above) when not in use — I have been using the Kindle almost daily and haven’t had to charge it. The battery meter was gradually decreasing from 100% and got down to about 70% full until last night when it gave me a Battery Low popup, then five minutes later gave me the dreaded Critical Battery screen. I plugged it into the mains charger that came with it (via a US-to-UK plug adapter) and it restarted happily a few minutes later, after which I left it to fully charge overnight without problems. Aside from the sudden change from 70% charged to Battery Low to Critical Battery — making the charge level indicator worthless — I’m very pleased that I got nearly eight weeks of regular use from the Kindle between charges.