This book has to be destined for greatness. Not just because I feel proud of whats on paper right now but because of everything I have been able to survive so far....
First of all to my great shame on the eve that I was about to print out the 70k or so words I had so far I decided to reread it. Going through one of my moods when I feel I should have accomplished more I completely reduced it down to about 30k taking out chapter after chapter that I felt needed to be redone completely. Once that was complete I headed to bed without any regrets till the following morning when upon seeing the mess I made and my dear husband asked me how the writing was going.
Having survived all that stuff I set about working on something I could be really proud of. One day while going to the bathroom I left my work on the screen. My darling son proceeded to erase about 40 pages of work and typing a million dots in the process. Up discovering what had happened I rushed to hit the undo button. Unfortunately he had done so much that my last undo possible was him trying to type his name. Yes I know you might be thinking that I should have closed it up and opened it up again. Yeah wouldn't work, After countless losses of pages due to closing the program or battery deaths I had set it up so it auto saves my work every 2 minutes....
After watching so much work get lost though through my own actions and those of Donovan I decided to print it out, shove it in an envelope and call it a day. I also decided that I would retype everything allowing myself to review and edit that beginning that I mentioned earlier was holding me back. I began the journey with enthusiasm and joy and discovering many things to help me on the long road, from worksheets to assist in building my world to character notebook help.
I also took many of those old office supplies I had bought over the past year and got myself organized so I would never loose another name card or note. I was ready, prepared and filled with so much positive energy that after an asthmatic sleepless night I decided to start typing it all again. I hooked up the old computer to the 36" LCD Flat screen tv (more so I wouldn't watch a movie and get distracted than anything else) and started typing. The words flowed through me and onto that screen. The beginning was sharp and exactly what I wanted. Paragraphs sounded like the voice I had lost when my mom died. My son running past me with his toys in hand didn't distract me from anything. My husband sat down next to me and I was able to hold a conversation with him while still developing the character of Rian (yes I meant to spell it like that) in my head. Suddenly though the screen flashed and I saw the worst thing possible. A small window that informed me Microsoft Word has experienced an error and was now shutting down.
Poor Danny, He tried frantically to fix it, or to find a way to print out what I had. Nothing, and due to the love my son had shown my previous work I had taken off the Auto save feature. 4 hours of work was flushed away due to no ones fault but the error's box. I have to tell you I almost stopped. I didn't want to write anymore, I expressed to Danny that it was as if fate had decided my work was crap and no one should read it. He responded with something that kept me going. "Your work is not crap, its good. all this stuff happening is only helping you make it better, and all the headaches its putting you through will only mean that when you finish your reward will be that much sweeter."
I love the man.
So here I am on my a 3.5 hour streak of writing and I couldn't be happier of what I have accomplished. I do however back it up every 10 minutes or so, manually onto the hard drive, the portable drive and the RW cd sitting in the CD Drive. Bit much? Yeah but what would you do if all of the above had happened to you?
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