Typing in the dark
Love this:
INTERVIEWER Were you actually typing in the dark?
NICHOLSON BAKER: Yes. I had a couple different laptops because they were not all that dependable, and one of them had a slider bar. I could slide the screen brightness down to almost nothing, so I was sitting in complete darkness. The screen would have just the tiniest hint of phosphorescence and a faint crackle of static electricity. I thought, This is an option Dickens did not have.
From the Paris Review interview.
Before I became a father, I imagined I would sit up at night keeping an eye on my sleeping child while tapping away at a darkened laptop, writing some magnum opus. Of course, I never did; too tired, always too tired.