Checking in, with apologies for not posting more this past week. After my motherboard went out on my laptop, and I lost a few days of work I hadn’t yet backed up, I acquired a refurbished laptop and spent some time setting it up. The refurbished one works better than the old one did when it was brand new, which is a nice surprise.
I don’t use my laptop to post here, but keep it disconnected from the Internet, to encourage focus on my fiction writing. So I haven’t been online much while getting the new computer set up and catching up on some of the lost work.
It turns out be just as well those pages were lost. I’d been planning to go back and revise that portion of the story, to regain the thread I outlined, and it appears the universe or fates, or whatever is responsible for the computer problem, agreed with that plan and forced the issue before I went any further. The powers that be stopped me in Chapter 4.
This last week has also been a lesson in backing up work. I have a daily routine that hadn’t been working very well due to the old computer’s malfunction, which affected my network connection first. But a floppy would’ve worked fine, for what I lost, and the file would’ve taken less than a minute to copy.
So, writers, the moral of my story this week is back up your work, even if the usual method isn’t working. Use another. Use whatever works, but back it up.
Today my obstacle is printing. My little office area in the living room is going through some construction work, so I’ve been disconnected from my favorite printer.
There’s always something that will prevent work if I let it. The true challenge for every writer, and for that matter every human, is to be flexible in our ability to maneuver around the obstacles life presents, while remaining committed to our goals. Life tests our resolve, and we either break it, or we bend or adjust our course and keep going.
1.
Oh nooo. That’s a disaster. Glad you’ve semi-recovered.
Comment by Mark — September 22, 2004 @ 4:58 am
2.
Thanks, Mark. I seem to be well-recovered now.
Comment by Barbara — September 22, 2004 @ 10:30 am
3.
Buy a Mac. Your computer problems will go bye-bye. I think that all writers should own a Mac. In fact, all people that wish to retain their sanity should own a Mac.
Comment by Peter — September 23, 2004 @ 7:38 pm
4.
I must respond to Peter. We don’t need Macs. All we need is enough post-it notes, invented by Michele, or was it Romy?….
I actually would like to try a Mac because of all those die-hards out there. I want to see what the shouting is all about.
Comment by Mark — September 25, 2004 @ 3:24 am
5.
Having just changed out computers for the third time in the last six months, I sympathize. I swear the buggers always know when I’m on deadline. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you.
Comment by vikk — September 25, 2004 @ 3:54 pm
6.
Peter, I’ve worked with a Mac in the past and I loved it. For simplicity we’ve stayed with our windows-based set-up, keeping all our software configurations as they are for now.
Mark, I’m picturing Jim Carey covered in Post-It Note prayers (Bruce Almighty).
Vikk, I thought I was bad off. Three in six months? My sympathies.
Comment by Barbara — September 25, 2004 @ 4:33 pm
7.
“Simplicity” and “Windows” don’t belong in the same sentence. Windows has certainly come a long way since 3.1, but with a Mac, everything “just works”. I made the switch 2.5 years ago, and I am never looking back.
This is coming from someone who writes business software for Windows for a living. Hey, ya gotta pay the bills.
Comment by Peter — September 26, 2004 @ 9:01 am
8.
With more than one computer, it’s simpler to have ‘one’ system than multiple incompatible OS’s.
My favorite OS is Debian.
Comment by Ken — September 26, 2004 @ 10:16 am