Time To Write

I looked at my writing log--the place where I record my goal totals for the day and actual words written--and saw that there have been nine days this month when I wrote nothing at all. Not good. I'll never reach my goal at this rate. Besides all the distractions there have been lately in my personal life, the internet and the social media are just too much of a temptation for this recluse to while away valuable time each day. So, I've decided to unplug until I get this book finished. I call it a book and it isn't even that yet and won't be unless I stick to the program.

Happy writing, all! See you on the other side.

Devon

Evil Computer Is Back

Yes, he's back and in fine form today.

The day started off fine. More than fine. We got the very good news that our house closing is scheduled for Wednesday. We haven't bought a new house, it's the same old one we've lived in for the past twenty-two years. We're just refinancing at less than half the interest rate we're paying now, which means lower monthly payments. Yay! And even with the lower payments, the term of the loan is the same as the remainder of the original, which means the house will be ours, OURS in just a few more years. But I get ahead of myself.

So, the morning started off great. What with the house news and our recent adoption having gone so smoothly, I was beginning to think maybe our rotten luck had started to turn. After hubby went to work this early afternnon, I came in here and sat down at the keyboard, jazzed to write. Yes, things were looking up!

I read through a few paragraphs I'd written yesterday to bring myself up to speed on where I left off, stopping now and then to change a word or add a line. I got to where I stopped last outing and I continued with the story. The writing was going fine, smooth even. I was making progress, getting the words down in the manuscript. Then, BLINK. My screen goes to black. The air stops running and an unearthly silence settles around me. But not before I hear the boom of a transformer blowing up somewhere down the road.

After a few choice words, I got up and set about doing something to pass the time, cause I got a bad feeling about this. And what is there to do when the lights are off except, ewww, housework. Resigned to waiting, I folded some towels and loaded hubby's lunch dishes into the dishwasher. After an hour, I ended up sitting in my armchair, staring out the window to see if I could spot the Jackson Energy truck.

The electric finally came back on at about a quarter til eight tonight. First thing I did was rush in here and boot up the computer to see if the additions to my document survived. They didn't. Vanished. The document looked the same as it did when I opened it earlier today. I thought Word had an autosave feature. In fact, I know it does, but it sure didn't save my work today. Must go check those settings.

I guess this is my comeuppance for bragging just yesterday to someone about how meticulous I am about saving my work.

Devon

p.s. - I just went and changed my setting in Word to autosave every 5 minutes.

Lost Weekend

No, I'm not referring to the classic old movie. I'm talking about the past two days. I spent all day Saturday trying to figure out what was wrong with our desktop. No go. So I went ahead and crashed the thing and started it over from scratch. The difference in this time and times past--I had everything saved elsewhere so I didn't lose anything. Needless to say, I didn't get any writing done over the weekend. But I wrote over 1,600 words on Friday. Two steps forward, one step back.

Of course, crashing the computer couldn't be the end of it. I was trying to fast bake a couple of potatoes last night and broke the microwave. Then today, hubby went out to mow the yard. He'd only made a couple of passes around the perimeter when one of the back tires on the lawn mower came right off the rim. We tried to fix it back on, but that was a no-go, too. He's taking it to work with him tomorrow so he can stop at a garage and have it put back on the rim.

Hope your weekend was better than mine. I can't wait for tomorrow morning.

Devon

Gone In A Flash

Methinks my tired typist picture is a little dated with that dinosaur of a monitor. It's been a while since I've dragged the old girl out and when I inserted her into the post, the image of that big, thick monitor jumped out at me. Oh, well.

This has not been my night.

Now that I'm in full-blown writing mode, I've become obsessed with saving my work. Each day, I'm making good progress and the thought of possibly losing it all to the "evil computer" makes me a little crazy. Over the years, I've lost so much in computer crashes and fried disk drives, it's no wonder I'm paranoid.

I've been writing on the laptop and saving to a flash drive. Then, tonight, I figured--just to be on the safe side--I'd put a copy of the ms. on the big desktop. So, I did that. Then I decided maybe I'd better copy the ms. to my other flash drives as well. Cause you never know, and I read somewhere that flash drives sometimes get corrupted. So I go looking for my other two flash drives and I find only one. The nice big one that has several gigs of storage space is missing. I can't find it anywhere. It has all my pictures on it. But I refuse to panic. For now.

I took several calming breaths and clicked over to Amazon to check on the Pat Rice book I ordered. Last time I checked, which was Saturday, it was sitting in Lexington, so it should have been here today, but I didn't get it. Well, according to the tracking record, it was delivered today. Well, no, it wasn't. And just to make doubly sure, I turned on all the outside lights, looked all around inside the garage, then went outside and looked on the doorstep of every entrance to the house. Nothing. Not that I really expected to find it. Every time I order a book, they wedge the Amazon box into the mailbox so tight it usually ends up ripping before I manage to get it out. I've never had anything get lost before, but if it doesn't turn up tomorrow, I guess I'll be calling the post office.

Tomorrow, I'm taking my daughter for a much-needed outing. We're going to visit my aunt. My cousin is there for a couple of days and we don't get to see each other often, so it should be fun. I could use the break.

Devon

Calling For Backup

Yes, the Evil Computer is back. Over at Bookends, the topic for today is backing up your computer files, so it got me to thinking. Is there any 100% safe and sure backup method?

Over the years I've backed up my word files on floppies, rewritable CDs, and flash drives, but I've still managed to lose a lot of material as a result of computer crashes. Any backup method is only as good as the person using it. You have to resave each document after each and every little edit or you're not covered.

Let's run it down. Floppies are out of the question. They never were reliable, and these days computers usually don't even have a floppy drive. Writable CDs are good, I guess, but I always had a problem with those as well. On every computer I've owned--and I'm now up to half a dozen--the CD drive has eventually stopped working. I'm now using flash drives, but I understand they are also vulnerable because they can become corrupted.

Back in the very early days of owning a computer, I printed everything. It didn't take long before I was buried under a mountain of partials in hard copy. I printed each time I made a change or added to each document and, after a while, I couldn't make heads or tails of any of it because the sheer volume of version 1, 2 , 3 etc. became overwhelming. And let's not forget the cost of paper and ink for all that printing.

So, what's the answer?

Many writers set up a Google or Yahoo email account and email their manuscripts to themselves. But I foresee the same old problem with this. You would have to be super diligent and email the ms. each and every time you make a change to the text.

I know how heartbreaking it is to lose an entire manuscript or even multiple partials, not to mention pictures and other sundry items, in a computer crash. Just the other day, a dear friend and fellow writer asked me if I perchance had any of her old manuscripts on my computer from when we used to critique together. Sadly, I had to say I didn't. Those critiques were two computers and several years ago. I feel so bad for her. She's lost everything she didn't have in hard copy.

If anyone has a tried and true backup method that I haven't mentioned, I'd love to hear about it.

Devon