Step One

Last time, I wrote a fanciful account of how the mystery dog destroyed my data by chewing on the power cord of my computer. Fortunately, our cat hasn't learned to read, so that particular scenario isn't likely to happen.

The consequence of such an occurrence, however, is all too real. Data loss from any number of causes happens all the time. Because our data is truly the most valuable thing we have on our computers, it's worth protecting. And because it's of a different order than paper records, the protection method has to be appropriate to the task.

Protection of data can be thought of as an attempt to prevent corruption or deletion of the data. If the bits that make up my manuscript get scrambled because of, say, the power surge I mentioned earlier, the data is no longer in a useful form. It may be possible to retrieve parts of it, but as an entirety, it's not so useful anymore. If the medium which holds those bits of my manuscript data, gets damaged or destroyed, I'm in a far worse situation. My data, though made of bits and bytes, resides on some physical medium. Destroy the physical, and you've destroyed the virtual.

Let's address that second type of damage to my data first.

Too Long Away

OK, so I've been away longer, far longer, than expected. I really have no excuse. Well, no excuse except for the dog that chewed on my computer's power cable. That's particularly annoying, because I don't even have a dog.

Anyway, the dog chewed on the power cord to my laptop. The computer screen flashed and then went dark, even as the dog lit up like a 50-pound furry sparkler. I hadn't realized that my laptop drew that much current.

So, to make a long story short enough to be interesting, the computer was DOA. Doggy electrical trauma was not something it could have survived, I guess. The dog was singed around his muzzle and, oddly enough, his hind end, but otherwise all right. Well, whenever he got near a floor lamp, it did tend to get really bright, but otherwise, he was OK.

Convince Me

So - I have failed abysmally to meet my own goal of doing daily posts. Perhaps I should just admit defeat, and try to post something when I actually have something to say. Sounds like a good idea, right? That's the way we'll proceed from here then.

Anyway, I blogged elsewhere today about how we come to believe something. I was asking how we come to accept one proposition rather than another, and what role an authority figure may have in that process. I offer no answers to this question now. I was more interested in seeing if I could spark a discussion about the nature of this whole sequence of coming to believe something as true.

Discipline

I've missed posting anything for the past few days. This illustrates an important fact about writing for publication.

If you don't write, you can't publish. If you can't publish, then you may want to reconsider your choice of "writer" as a career.

Writing is no different than any other intentional activity in that it's a discipline. You have to do it every day. If you're not writing, you're not a writer.

So - more discipline going forward. It becomes a task, doesn't it? Like a job. Yep, that's pretty much the nature of a discipline.

This short reminder brought to you by a (self-imposed) task master.

Long Short Story

Once upon a time, there was a young man.

He wanted to be a bard. He was studying to be a wizard, though. He had been told by a person he thought wise that he was cut out to be a wizard. Wizards were respected and had power. Bards were enjoyed, so long as they told a good tale and sang a good song.

He wanted to be a bard especially because he was finding he wasn't a very good wizard. This put him in a quandary. If he finished his wizard studies, nobody would hire a bad wizard. He would have wasted all his time studying to be something he couldn't be.

If he stopped studying wizardry, everyone would know that he hadn't been meant to be a wizard right away. There would be some embarrassment, but there would be no wasted time.

Even as he studied to be a wizard, he wondered what he should do. Then the idea came to him.

He would try his hand at being a bard, during his wizard studies.

So, he read books about what bards needed to know. He contacted people who hired bards, and told them some of his stories. He sang his tales as well as he could, knowing what he knew.

It turned out he wasn't a very good bard either.

Some of the people he sang his tales to were curt and short with him. "Get away, kid. Don't call us, we'll call you!" they shouted. He knew that wouldn't happen.

Others, though, were very much different. One in particular actually took him aside and told him where he needed to work on his tales and his songs. It was very reassuring to have one of the famous persons who hired bards actually take time to help him.

Years passed. The young man had finally decided that it was time to stop studying to be a wizard. He met a wonderful girl and they wed. After that, they had a baby boy. He had some problems, but he outgrew them and became a very smart young man himself. And he and his wife had babies as well.

The urge to be a bard never left the young man. Now he was a much older man. His wife had always wanted to be a spinner of tales herself. She found a group of women who wanted to do the same, and they met once a month and learned from each other. Sooner or later, each of them would spin a yarn that would get noticed. They began to become well-known for their tales. And the old man was impressed.

He finally was asked to join the group of women, to help do some things that no one else wanted to do. It wasn't the kind of invitation he had imagined, but he was able to spend time with smart women who were good at telling tales. And something happened as he met with them month after month.

He found himself wanting to become a bard. Now, old bards aren't very much in demand. A fact like this had never stopped the old man. Things change, and this might change as well.

He remembered how the famous bard hirer had taken time to help him. He recalled what he had learned from the women as he had gotten to know them. And he realized that he still wanted to tell tales and sing songs to others, to take them to places other than where they were and help them see things they had never seen.

So he resolved to learn how to do this telling of tales and singing of songs as well as he could. He determined to be the best old man bard that he could be. And he found a way to tell tales and talk about telling tales and converse with other bards about tales and their telling. And he began to put his words together, and perhaps tell some tales and talk to the other bards. And so it goes.

Novel Idea

Here's something to do before Thanksgiving.

If you're unfamiliar with this website, check it out. It's the site for NaNoWriMo, a program that offers would-be writers an opportunity to write a 50,000-word (or longer) novel in one month.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is not to produce a publication-ready novel. It's to help instill the discipline of writing in a long form. The goal is to get 50,000 words written by the end of the month. To that end, there are local groups all over that can help motivate and sustain the participants as the month progresses. There's one here in the Kansas City area, with over 2400 members.

I'm not going to go on in detail about all the good things that NaNoWriMo does, but I wanted to mention it as we get closer to Autumn.

I took part in NaNoWriMo a few years ago, and I'll probably do it again this year. It's an opportunity too good to pass up if you have any desire to get that first novel written.

Apology and Apostrophes

So - less than one week into this new blog, and already I missed a day. All I can say in my defense is that I didn't even turn my computer on long enough on Sunday to do more than check email. The day was full. For a day of rest, it was very busy. My apologies - to any and everyone who might have wanted to read something new and fresh here.

Now, about those apostrophes. A commonplace in online composition is the habit so many people have developed of using the form "it's" for the possessive form of the third-person neutral pronoun. Grammarians howl when they see this, and more than once I've seen a reply to some post calling the author of the original post out because of this egregious misuse of English.

Shutting Off the Firehose

Yesterday I posted a piece about the opposite of writer's block, that situation where the words come unbidden in a torrent of creativity. I didn't know if some people might view this as a problem, or if it was in fact a blessing for an author who occasionally struggles to get the words to flow.

It appears that it's not a problem. In fact, with no comments, I have to conclude that it is a blessing for those who experience it. Even when it finally stops, after hours and hours of tapping away at the keyboard, leaving you in a state of physical and mental exhaustion, it's not a problem to be solved.

Well, I guess that puts that question to bed...

Firehose

Yesterday we explored strategies and tactics for dealing with writer's block. Today we're going to check in and think about the opposite condition.

What do you do when the words won't stop coming?

You might not see this as a problem. I know several writers who can sit down at their computers and knock out 8000, 10,000, or more words in one marathon writing session. And these words aren't just filler - they're examples of good, solid prose, stories that have substance, and characters that engage the reader.

However, I'm talking about the situation that arises when you're so into your story and the telling of it that you can not pull yourself away from the computer. I don't know if this is problem for any writers going old-school, using a typewriter, but it can happen with a computer.

Here's a scenario:  You're writing your story, and the flow of emotions in the narrative drags you along. You want to see what happens next. You have to get those words down. The story has been plotted beforehand, and you've lived in this world of your own creation long enough to know its peculiarities and nuances. You're intimately acquainted with your characters. All you want to do now is to give all this knowledge and commitment concrete form. You have to write the words that make all this real.

And so you write. Bio-breaks come and go, you may take a moment to get something to drink, the phone rings and goes unanswered. The story must be told. Finally, twelve or fifteen or twenty hours later, you must pause. Your fingers aren't working quite right anymore. Your eyes are dry and itchy, and your tongue feels like old leather.

How do you deal with these incredible gushes of creativity? How do you maintain your sense of balance? How do you remain healthy in body and mind?

I would guess that these moments in the groove happen far fewer times than having the words stop flowing all together. Nonetheless, the groove times do happen.

So - what do we do? Do we just give in to the muse, that purveyor of words, and write until we can't write anymore? Or do we find stopping places, where we can rest and re-group, and then perhaps an hour later move back into the groove?

My own writing sometimes gets that way, but not very often. I've done some programming in my life, and one time I wrote a 900-line batch file that was a complete file management system. It took about three days. I don't remember exactly what happened in those three days, but I wasn't really present anywhere but in my programmer mind. The program practically wrote itself. It was wonderful. I find that those few times I've had this kind of focus in writing prose, that it's the same feeling. The sense of presence and involvement is practically physical.

When the muse is showering you, drenching you with the firehose, do you want to leave the stream?

I don't have a good answer for this. That's why I've gone to this length to describe the event. I'm throwing it open to any readers. Have you been in this sort of situation before? What were its health effects, physical, mental, and/or emotional? Were any personal relationships affected by the time spent writing? Join in the conversation and leave a comment.

Block Party

The challenge every writer has is what to write.

When the muse is cooperative, the words flow easily. When she's not feeling friendly, the sky is shut and the drought settles in.

So how do you cope with the dry spells?

Here are some ways I've found useful to get my words flowing once again.

Look around you. If necessary, go outside. Observe in detail what's happening about you. Listen to the air moving past your ears. Feel the textures of the walls, the floor, your fingertips. Notice the specific.

Think about your characters, if you're writing fiction. Imagine one of them is in the room with you. What would you talk about? What questions might you ask? What answers do you expect you'd get in return?

Log into your favorite social network site. See what's happening in the world of that particular environment. Don't get too drawn in, though. You're only there to see if something has happened that might spur your creativity.

Put on some music. You may listen to music as you write. Try to find some music that's different from what you were listening to earlier. For instance, if you were listening to symphonic, find some folk music. If you were listening to hard rock 'n roll, find some Celtic music. Break the routine and listen to something perpendicular to what you normally hear.

Sit in your writer's chair, get a pad and pencil, and write out the sentence "I don't want to write today" line after line. See if you find yourself disagreeing with that statement.

Finally, if you have multiple projects underway, close what was causing you to hit the wall, and open another unfinished work. Maybe you just need a change of scenery.

I started this post with no idea where I was going to go. Not writer's block exactly, but still, a blank page. Are any of these ideas helpful? Do you have other techniques that work for you? Add a comment, and let's share.

Staring At The Screen

A new blog, a new task set...

I've been blogging on Blogspot for several years now. I've written a lot of strongly opinionated pieces, and more recently, tried to keep a focus on more spiritual matters. I've decided to leave the polemics, for the most part, to others.

So why am I starting a new blog?

Quite frankly, because I want to venture into some new waters. My wife is a published author, and I have aspirations of being in that same situation one day. If you're going to be published, you need to have written something worth reading. And if people are going to read your words, they have to be available.

And so this new venue. Instead of writing about the subjects I've treated on my other blog, I'm going to write about the act and practice of writing itself. There may well be guest posts from time to time, so it won't be only my voice that you hear.

I'm setting a very ambitious goal for myself. I want to write a daily post here. That will almost certainly mean that there will be some posts more profound than others. I hope they're all interesting, though, and worthy of reading.

So, here we go. There will be another post tomorrow.