WIP: How to Kill a Computer
I thought I’d continue in the murderous vein, since that’s how I’m feeling at the moment. I’m still working on the blankety-blank backstory chapter. That’s because, after two solid hours of rewriting, I hit “close file,” the computer asked if it should “save changes?” and some sadistic spirit took hold of my fingers and clicked “no.”
I thought I was safe because I have WordPerfect set up to save once every minute, but apparently that’s only good if your computer accidentally shuts down. If you’re dumb enough to click “no” to the
“save changes?” question, it decides you’re not worth the effort to back up your file.
I back up everything onto a flash drive at the end of each day. At three am every morning, my entire C drive is saved to an external hard drive. All this in addition to saving my work-in-progress every minute as I work on it. Nothing, though, can save me from myself.
Of course, what I wrote during those two hours was simply the most brilliant prose I’ll every write! I’ve tried to recreate it, but it will never be as good.
I finally took a break and babysat my grandsons for a couple of hours this evening, which was exactly what I needed. Before my stepdaughter and son-in-law left, my stepdaughter took the baby inside to nurse, while I pushed NJ, the three-year-old on the swing. He kept saying “Grammy Di, bump your head!” So I jumped around in my gimpy way, hitting my head with my knuckles and making him laugh. It took me about 30 minutes to realize he was really saying “Grammy Di, pump your breasts!” Cracked me up.
So it’s 10:35. I will not go to bed until this chapter is finished or I’ll have one of those “can’t find my classroom and I’m late and haven’t studied for the exam” dreams again tonight.
Hugs, all. Sleep tight.
Diane, grandchildren can surely make us feel better. Hope you had good dreams!!
Don’t forget your undo button…
Grandchildren are great gifts….
Sorry about losing your work…I have done that so many times.
busy weekends….thought I would try one of those books about the SHOPAHOLIC…this is the last one (I think) SHOPAHOLIC and BABY-girls if you want a laugh-read these books…hilarious…I chuckled aloud…S. Kinsela…she is so entertaining…
D-you are right about my not knowing how to take a break–I interviewed my Viet Vet again yesterday…whew…
I am going to take some time this summer to regroup while I work on columns, novel, and the Vietnam Book…
Am eagerly awaiting Carlene Thompson’s release the end of this month-mysteries-WV writer…
brenda, (i know you’re brenda even though you come through as anonymous for some reason), please don’t tell me i could have been saved by the undo button. i think it was too late for that since i actually closed the file.
ah well, i’ve moved way beyond that issue now and all is well.
It was too late if you had closed the file. Definitely…
When I was in undergrad and was in my 40’s and already forgetful…I finished typing 39 reports on 39 books (children literature…)not book reports-but reports that took lots of work…I hit the delete button (at 2:00 A.M.) no kidding…I was so aggravated…now I save after every few words and back up on the disk drive…I love those little things…despite all this-the electric at school went off the other day and I lost 3 pages of lesson plans during my prep period-Will we ever learn????