 For Authors: June 19, 2024 Issue [#12603] |
This week: Miasma Edited by: Fyn  
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1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions
There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.~~ E.B. White
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I work (as a publisher) in my home office. I write out in our Maui Room. Started a Nano out there but only made it to about 40k before getting sidetracked with life and work. I really wanted to finish that book. Booted up the computer for the first time in agaes and was confronted by a blue screen. Nothing worked.
"But ... but ... my book is on it. "
"Not anymore."
I could never recreate all I'd written. After all this time, I couldn't remember in detail what I'd written. I knew the storyline, but the details, the descriptions? Lost. It was like hearing about someone dying long after the fact. Broadsided by a very big bus! Such a loss. I floundered around in something very much like grief. Then I felt silly. Then I witched about it, moaning and groaning and feeling very sorry for myself. And heaven only knows what all else was on there as well.
Get over it. But ... but ... no, I don't want to. I want my book back! I don't want it lost in the Great Nothingness where things seem to go when computers die or someone hits that bad, bad key that sents it off screaming into the void.
I was still complaining about it recently to a friend on the phone, while I did a few forlorn searches on the work computer because maybe, just maybe I'd sent it across the house. I did!!! Not all of it, but a good healthy chunk of it! Talk about happy tears. Good thing I was talking to another writer, because no one else would have understood!!
It got me to thinking about other lost words. Back in the dark ages, those precomputer days, I had boxes of pages. I also moved. A LOT! A drawback of being a free spirit those boxes were. Hard to just pick up and go with umpteen boxes of work! Some I still have, but others seem to have vanished over time. One, in particular, I still have fond hopes of discovering (or rediscovering!) one of these days. It was an Excalibur story that I'd started, one I'd had so much fun writing, and then got sidetracked with my eldest daughter's birth -- some forty-plus years and nineteen moves ago. A ridiculous optimist, perhaps. But I'd thought this last book gone forever and it isn't! Who knows? It may still come to light.
It is one thing to remember to 'save' stuff ... newsletters included. Clouds are marvelous but they run out of sky. Thank goodness I emailed the one thing to a friend!!!
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Another bit of the story that I wrote here on WDC for a contest. :)
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Turkey DrumStik  disagrees: I'm not sure I can get behind the following quote:
A memoir should have some uplifting quality, inspiring or illuminating, and that's what separates a life story that can influence other people.~~Mitch Albom
I think my disagreement with this quotes exists because I actually have two ideas for my own memoirs, and my aim with both of them is to be up front about some truly horrifying events in my life. These events on their own are rough (think witnessing violence or being subjected to abuse within the context of a friendship), but the real brutality is in the aftermath. I want to write memoirs that show how tough the aftermath can be so people are under no illusion that healing is a complete process or even guaranteed. I want my memoirs to make people examine themselves in addition to giving me a chance to set the record straight about what really happened.
And if that is not inspiring, illuminating, and uplifting in just so many ways, I don't know what is!!! Methinks, you are not giving yourself enough credit!!
brom21  says: Probably the biggest element in my teenage years is when my schizophrenia was emerging. It was a time of suffering and sadness. Honestly, I never want to go back there again. Nevertheless, I have good times too that are memorable like playing board games with me, my brother, my brother-in-law and my sister. And, like everyone, I have memories of high school. Ah, the days. lol. I also reminisce about general things in the past which have become precious to me in the present. Thanks for the NL!
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