Mental gymnastics

Today's Mood: Restless. Today's Music: Alison Moyet-Alf (at the moment) Today's Writing: Sigh. Chapter 9 of Free Lunch. Today's Quote:

"Don't you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work." Gallagher

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I'm writing. I'm writing. I'm writing! See? I can do it! This morning I made myself sit down and write. No drawing. No stalling. Writing. That's it. One word at a time. I can do it. I have this weird mental game going. If I work on Free lunch for my small group (which meets, incidentally, tonight) then I can "play" and work on IFFY. I know it is all a game, because if I'm really honest with myself (which I try to do now and then--when it's not too scary), then I have to admit that I "talk" it this way so that the pressure is off my writing of IFFY. If I say that is what I am working on, then it makes it official and scary and then it has to be good and all that shit. But if I say I'm just playing, then who cares if it is all shit. See? Mental gymnastics. If I can just fool myself and work around my own brain. No wonder why this all tires me out so much.

I'm also going to try something new (yes, it may fall under the same heading of mental gymnastics cause it might just be another way to pretend I'm not really writing). I bought a digital voice recorder (think mini tape recorder without the tape) to record my thoughts while driving or whenever I have time to think. It doesn't happen as often as you might think. But every once and a while I get a great scene going in my head but I don't have time to write, so I'm going high-tech and trying to record that scene audibly so that when I do have time to write, I can play back and type it up. See? Again, writing but not. I'll let you know what I think of it when I get it. I bought it on Amazon.

Isn't it a wonder I get anything done?

Computers

Today's Mood: Frustrated. Today's Music: Evans Blue. Today's Writing: this blog. Today's Quote:

"To write, you need to simply write. The tools of your trade are in you. Don't make it harder than it is." -Heather Sellers in Page after Page

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My laptop died yesterday. The hard drive crashed. I can spend another $350 to get a new hard drive, but considering I just bought the dang thing 4 months ago, I hate to put more money into it. Macintosh computers are supposed to be one of the most reliable computers out there (one of the reasons I bought one in the first place), but so far, I haven't seen it. I got my first ibook 4 years ago. I don't know the lifespan of laptops, but 2 in four years doesn't seem that reliable to me--especially given the price of a Mac. So, I'm left wondering what to do. Should I put more money into it (it is a used ibook G4) or should I buy a new Mac powerbook, or should I go for a windows machine?

What do you use for your writing? Do you like it? Has it been reliable? I am so frustrated with the whole thing; I don't want to spend time on computers, I just want to be able to write! Maybe I should just go back to the basics: pen and paper. (I will be for a while anyway--while I figure out what I'm going to do about the laptop thing. My girls keep whining at me to get off their computer. And I'm using my husbands at the moment because he's at work. But competition is fierce here.) I love computers when they work. They make writing and revising so much easier for me. But boy, do I hate computers when they don't work!

Anyway, I'd welcome any input/warnings/shared horror stories/sympathy/pep talks...... that you can offer.

Silver Linings

Today's Mood: poorer (not sure that's technically a mood--but it sure is how I feel at the moment!) Today's Music: Sarah Mclachlan. Today's Writing: query letters. Today's Quote:

Back-up your work. Now. And often! -Sarah McElrath

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Saturday my computer died. Crashed and burned. No kidding. It was working fine the day before. I plugged it in Saturday morning, planning on running a back-up and then printing my manuscript to get it out in the mail again, and what do you know, it didn't seem to want to start up. Weird black lines fizzled across the screen, the apple appeared, but nothing else did.

In my limited computer knowledge, I deduced my power supply wasn't working correctly--the icon on the top of the screen kept flicking between battery and power supply. After much inept finagling and a trip to the Mac store, I got it working. I made a back-up.

Then, while I was on the phone explaining the problem to a tech. guy, I made the mistake of plugging in the power supply again. Bad idea. Screen went black and would recover no more.

At the Mac store, I asked for my options. "You won't like them," the guy told me. He was right. Not possible to repair--or at least, not financially worthwhile to repair--so it was either buy new or buy used.

Long and short of the story was, even though I was crying over the money I didn't plan on spending, at least I didn't lose anything. No photos, no writing, no email addresses....

I had just bought an external hard-drive this summer. Usually I run back-ups of my entire system every two weeks, but due to Khardomah, I had put it off. If it hadn't recovered for that short period of time, I would have lost a month's worth of writing.

So make a back up folks, cause you never know. Turns out that Apple no longer makes those particular power supplies--they've had trouble with them. Imagine that. Now they offer a third-party power supply. Needless to say, I bought one for this laptop.

Swimming hard just to stay afloat.

Today's Mood: Industrious. Music: Train-My Private Nation. Writing: revising chapter nine. Quote:

It is just as well that it came to an end. The endless cohabitation with
these imaginary people had begun to make me not a little nervous. Henrik
Ibsen (1828-1906)

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Hey-ho, check out the new links list! If you have a blog, or cool--even useful--website that you think should be on this blog, let me know and I'll add it. I check both the comments and my email so you can reach me either way. The Gliffy site I added because I've used it to make a floorplan of my MC's dorm room--I get a better picture of it in my head that way. After all, I can't have them doing something that would take twenty feet when they only have ten. (plus my memory isn't swell, so if I design a floorplan, then when I get to chapter thirty, I'll remember how the room was arranged in chapter twelve)

Okay, this is the fourth time I try to publish this post. Each time I do it cuts half of it out--not that I don't need editing, but hey! I don't want some computer editing me. Anyway. I tried to send a link to this video clip called Vision 2020 but it seems to screw things up, so I'll try putting it in the links on the side. Vision 2020 is a hypothetical commencement speech in the year 2020 and it looks at how education, technology and the world has changed in the last 15 years. Frankly, I find it both frightening and exhilarating. I'm not a technophobe, but often I feel like I'm swimming just to stay afloat. The thought of how to keep my kids not only floating but swimming in the changing future scares me. Yet the possibility of unilateral access to information appeals to me. Take a look (if I can get it working). It's about 16 minutes long.

On the home front we have managed to recover from the stomach bug AND get the christmas tree up and decorated. Not bad for the weekend. However, Friday's snowday meant that I played catch-up all Monday and therefore did no revising at all. So today I got up in the dark, freezing cold to come to work early and revise. The ONLY thing that got my little butt out of bed that early--THE DEADLINE. Seriously, what a great motivator! December 31 lurks closer and closer and fear of not finishing the revision works as effectively as a cattle prod for getting me out of my nice warm bed and off to work. This particular deadline is for the Delacorte Press first Young Adult Novel Contest. 25 more days to revise 22 1/2 chapters--and no, my math isn't that bad. Dec. 31 is a Sunday so I have to send it out on the 30th. Can she do it? Yes she can! (see, television isn't all bad!)

How's your writing going? Writing every day--even if it's only ten minutes? Is there any contest you can enter to create a deadline for you? (I'll make one up if it helps)

Oh, one last thing. About the quote, I'm been in Katie's head so long that I'm regressing back to adolescence--and it sure the hell isn't comfortable this time either!