lost forever

Earlier this year my beloved macbook passed away. It was a difficult time for me and a rather heavy blow to my writing. I just want to clarify that while my insurance did see to it that I not only got a replacement, but that I got upgraded quite a bit as well; there was however a very steep downside as well.

I had never really lost work before this. I saved everything regularly. My way of creating backup however was amateur and full of the mistakes that someone who has never lost anything before would make. Ignorance was bliss. Fear of having my work stolen was strong. So I did what any idiot would do and emailed myself chapters periodically - with a horrendously ill-thought-out system of making random subject lines with dates sometimes, chapter numbers periodically, and even little motivational bits and pieces like "fantastic weekend of editing" or "writing for 3 days solid" that told me nothing of their content or where in the story I had been working.

Needless to say this made the incredibly laborious task of putting a 150,000 word novel back together chapter by chapter at times, paragraph by paragraph more often, and sentence by sentence far too frequently; a complete and total fucking nightmare.

I have done the best that I can at the moment. I know I lost a lot of editing and recently added chapters that I wasn't completely happy with anyway. The problem is that it needs to be read start to finish by someone that knows the story well - meaning only I can do it... however knowing what I lost - both in what I'd already written and edited, combined with knowing how much time I've lost procrastinating and being distraught about my loss, has been taking its toll on my enthusiasm to have yet another read through, knowing damn well I'm likely to come across large sections that are repeated, missing totally, or had been fixed and subsequently lost.

I have completely lost one short story that I was working on but had been planning to work with someone to complete, seeing as it was a story I was writing about a terrible nightmare that they had which inspired me. I try to comfort myself with the fact that it was only about a chapter long and I could do it again, and better it if I were to give it the time.

My NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy are thankfully both completely intact which I am incredibly happy about. Also all of the short stories I wrote here and a few notebooks floating around were not affected in any way by the death of my dear old macbook.

I just wanted to do a little bit of writing here tonight to show myself that I can and get motivated again. It eats at me when I go for a time without writing. I have more stories to tell than I could ever manage to write in one lifetime and the clock is always ticking.

I suffer deeply if I'm not creative for a few days. Picture editing and photography help some. Playing piano tends to cheer me up. Nothing however is quite the same as telling a story and breathing life into characters that would never live otherwise. Creating worlds and entire universes with the movement of my fingers when they and my overactive imagination play nice together.

What else can I say. I've been gone from here for too long and I've suffered for it. I am ready to pay my penance and make it up to all of you and myself.

You haven't heard the last of me.