Today I learned that reading the wrong writing-related book is going to lead to disaster. Many will die and the others will be forced to survive on the flesh of their fallen comrades. It will not matter if the advice given helps you in anyway -- or even, apparently, if you read many different books and find help in various places. In the end, unless the book is written by a known pro, it will ruin you and you will end up like the Donner Party, who tried to cross the Rockies with a guide book written by someone who had not actually followed the trail.
So my sincere apologies to anyone who has read any of my articles or -- far worse, I assume -- my book, Without a Fear of Words. My only excuse for the book is that I didn't know and thought that some other new writers might find it helpful to read something from someone who loves to write and wanted to share that love of the act of writing with others.
(Yes, this is a joke! I decided to drop out of a conversation on another journal and didn't think my humor would be appreciated there. Probably not appreciated here, either, but this is my blog so I get to post it anyway. So there!)
Today has been a long day. I didn't get to bed until nearly 5 am and I was back up at 10:30 am only to find my computer turned off. How odd. Reached down to turn it back on. Nothing.
Tried again. Nothing. Started pulling at cords. NOTHING!
AAAIIIEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!
A moment to stop panicking remembering that just last night I had made a three cd backup. Good, good.
Then considered all the things that I hadn't thought to back up and panicked again. Decided to sleep for a while until maybe Russ got back home. He obviously knew and had gone to get something to fix the computer. (He didn't know, by the way.) Got up about an hour later and just started pulling cords, cleaning, seeing if there was any obvious problems. Russ came home. He was only mildly panicked. (He has his laptop next door, you see.)
I had pulled the tower out, cleaned off the back, checked the power cord. Plugged it back in, plugged the computer back in.
Power. Lights. Little whirling 'IT LIVES' noises.
It took it a little while, but it did come fully back to power. I think I found the problem too. A cat had chewed through a usb cord (an important and not easily replaced one, of course -- to my IPAQ, and now I can't sync it) and I think it just glitched. Lucky for me that the IPAQ wasn't in the cradle at the time.
So, computer up and running. All is great.
Until I pulled out the large drawer in my desk and it flew out of the desk toppled over and spread everything across the room.
On the other hand, I did find two missing rings.
2 comments:
Hugs on the computer. I know exactly how traumatic that is since it happened to me recently. Sadly in my case the hard drive was failing, but I did get it to stay on long enough to rescue my files.
As to the other, I also chose not to cut my wrists and dive into shark infested waters, but responded to that thread on a listserv of mine. Then I found out you responded on the real one and went to look. I had to laugh. Our responses had the same core. No wonder we get along so well *grin* (almost put in evil smilie but refrained at last moment.)
The people involved have some points. But they don't work with new writers on a regular basis -- not just 'haven't made it' writers, but real true 'haven't ever finished a story' writers. So what seemed obvious and too simplistic to them was just not aimed at them. That was what the original post pointed out, at least as far as the material went.
But hey, I enjoyed writing my blog answer just because it was fun.
Oh, and today -- no Internet for hours and hours. Ack.
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