Technical Difficulties; or How I Learned to Back Up My Files the Hard Way

Those of you who have read the odd entry from time to time will know that, of the projects I have proposed in this blog, my target of a 360 page book was the one I was most pre-occupied with, most inclined to write about and most proud of to date.

It is therefor with some regret and at least an equal measure of personal shame that I must report the following: on or about November 13, 2011 at approximately 9:30 am a piece of previously presumed "unbreakable" hardware malfunctioned and delivered at least 150 of the 180 pages written to date into the 'eternal ether and beyond' that is the final resting place of all corrupted data files.

I have not yet had the heart to confirm the exact page count by referring to my last hard backup which, I am sure you can gather from the previous paragraph, took place before several of my more recent periods of inspiration.

I am, as I am sure you can imagine, pretty pissed. I direct my current rage by turns at the manufacturer who designed a machine with an obvious self-destruct mechanism and at myself for trusting said manufacturer and failing to back-up the damn thing as often as I thought to myself "hmmm I should really do a back-up soon" but then wandered off to watch Star Trek instead.

So, as its stands, my project goals stand at the following degrees of completion at year 2:
A) Novel 30/360 pages (approximate);
B) Painting (see attached photographs); and
C) Opera (One Act - lyrics only).


There is, however, no use in crying over spilled milk and I will say that, in some ways, the utter destruction of what I had written over the last 6-8 months is, in one sense, a relief. It's easier to revise something with a complete overhaul than it is to do it in bits and pieces. Having got as far as half way through the story this time meant I had committed to various plot developments that created small problems in terms of character and dialogue developments in later scenes. Now I have the opportunity to redesign the elements that were troubling me without having to go through every page with a fine tooth comb to correct them. So, that's a plus.

Let me be your spokesperson, save early save often and, most important, save in multiple, consistent locations.

5.5 hours to Go

I don’t have long to write this post, which is a pity given that I’ve been wondering how to go about a graceful acknowledgment that my year long target will be expiring in roughly 5.5 hours and I have yet to dutifully check each of my ambitious goals off the list. I don’t like to admit defeat but I’m going to have to admit sanity and say that this particular year was a reasonably full one without the hobbies.

I did manage to write about ½ of my book. My goal is for 360 pages and I’m somewhere just short of 180 (golf claps please). I did actually do a little bit of painting (pictures to follow, but only out of focus ones that hide my actual painting skill level) and while I confess to not having touched an instrument with the intention of writing a song, I did buy garage band for the IPAD, (so that counts as a step right?).  I tried out for a couple shows, in lieu of writing music I thought I’d just sing it. I actually got offered a lead in one of them, but the rehearsal schedule was too demanding, so here we are back to square one.

All in all I feel pretty decent about it. I mean, I got half a book written. I’ve been working on this thing coming on 18 years and the bulk of it was the last six months. I think that’s going to feel good just to finish.

My fatal flaw was a combination of competing interests. I had the awful revelation that a blog was a record of time spent not working that others could track and for some reason that seemed like a bad thing at the time. Honestly, some things more important than my inner selfness happened. I’d say I really fell off the wagon in March of this year when some family matters arose that took priority. However, I expect that life can just be a series of excuses if I let it and as a consequence I’m signing up for year two. Keep you posted, but for now, back to work.  

I can see the future...that I wrote down.

A lot of authors talk about how writing has a therapeutic quality. I won’t go that far as I lack the personal insight to say it’s more than something I just really enjoy. However, I have noticed a phenomena that dovetails with that aspect of writing. I mean, of course, the predictive element of writing “what you know”.

My characters are not people that I know. Some of them are composites, some of them are in parts of situations that I have heard of, or personally experienced, but the version I write down has about as much relationship to reality as grape Kool-Aid does to the wine producing fruit.

But the part that I find really interesting is having written a bunch of stuff down, which is mostly how these people I have invented would operate under particular circumstances, I’m having a hard time ignoring how there are real life parallels to my imaginary people’s lives. I think this actually means that there is very little that is actually new under the sun and if a person takes the time to capture a few patterns in a story you can make some accurate predictions that are applicable in a variety of situations.

What I mean is, since starting this project every time someone mentions something that I am using in my book I feel an odd sense of proprietary interest. I was talking to a friend last night who really doesn’t like the small town she came from and it was all I could do not to shout “I’m writing a book about that”. Fortunately, I know, rather than feel, that my recreation is not objectively captivating to everyone who happens to stumble on a topic that I cover.

Seriously though, all that predictive stuff sounds like a bunch of Charlie Kaufman or Stephen King speak. I have no intention of having the characters in my story arrive at the author’s house looking for answers. You can call me old fashioned, but I think the fourth wall is unappreciated.

So in terms of the actual progress of the book, I was finding that I was rushing again. By this I mean I set down to write a scene that I intended to be more and am finding the action moves much more quickly than I thought. Which all is a way of saying this little novella is likely going to be fewer pages than I’d hoped. I have had many portions including most of the first chapter written for years. I finished the ending before I started this project and I’ve got portions of several of the intervening chapters.

While I prefer to write from start to finish, without jumping around, I’m finding that because my time for the project is limited I have to approach it in portions of work, which means sometimes moving forward in the narrative and working on the part that I remember my plan for. Rather than just reading through the first 60 pages every time I sit down to write to ensure I’m still in the right style.

Lost Gaijin

Those of you who know me well, know that I have a pretty sweet life. Case in point, I am traveling to Tokyo for a vacation with my sister and her husband and two children.  They have been living in 'Nippon' for two years and will be showing me around. My mother will also be there and my executive airfare from Seattle to Tokyo is courtesy of air miles that my mother collected. Not too shabby.

Now, what has this got to do with writing? I hear you cry. I was going to be using a good portion of this morning to work on my book project. I had the best laid plans, in the very general sense that spare time in lay-overs was to be spent writing.

That was until I woke up at 5:00 am this morning, sat bolt upright in bed and began the dance that only those who have slept through or otherwise managed to screw up setting an alarm know. It is the one legged dance of dressing yourself while calling a cab company with your free hand all the while chanting things to youself like "calm down, calm down, calm down". My first phone call of the morning was to Blue Bird Cabs Victoria and went something like "HiIneedacabtotheairportandIsleptthroughmyalarm."

I had just enough time to put on my shoes, feed my cats and run out the door. I'm not sure I locked the door but I really hope so.

Fortunately, I've been on the side of the paranoid angels for years when it comes to preflight packing and everything was sitting by the door in a tidy little pile. Although, I did realize on the flight to Seattle that I forgot to pack a towel, but I'm getting a head of myself. So I roll into my parking lot with my bag and my backpack just as the cab pulls up. Kudos to Blue Bird Cabs by the way, please give them your business. I run to the cab. The driver steps on it and we're off like a bat out of hell.

Now, I'm a pretty practical person and I can tell you that I knew when I woke up that I had missed the flight without question. But, I also have a fair amount of experience with airports and I know the key attitude to getting to your end destination is never say die. En route, back in the cab, I call into the AirCanada customer service desk to see if there is a 7:00 am flight, because at this point all I can think about is the connecting flight to Tokyo that I'm taking from Seattle. They can't help me but wish me luck.

When you're running for a plane you can get a kind of single-minded stupidness that makes you think that this flight is the most important thing you've ever done in your life and if you don't make it your mom won't love you anymore, and your professional friends will lose all respect for you, and before long you will be in ruin all because you couldn't manage to take a vacation properly. I am familiar with this level of pre-flight excitement and did my best to keep myself calm with deep breaths and visualization of the now popular Old Spice commercials. But the cab driver still felt the need to tell me regularly that everything would be ok.

I jump out of the cab and into the terminal at 5:28, in time to be called ridiculously late by the AirCanada Jazz employee KH. The details of what happened next are not entirely consequential except that the "well-wishing" customer service agent I had spoken to early edited my reservation while I was at the service desk speaking to the attendant by effectively deleting it! This had the effect of locking out AirCanada employee KH so that she could not book me on a later flight. I think that little stunt irked AirCanada employee KH, who instead of continuing the typical AirCanada policy of messing with aeroplan customers took pity on me, gave me a lecture about punctuality and got me out on the next flight to Vancouver. I will be bringing something back for her and welcome suggestions for what is an appropriate gift for the AirCanada employee who just gave a *&^% about someone she didn't have to.

I had another Amazing Race type connection through US Customs (as I now had 1 hour instead of 2.5 to make the gate) but through the grace of a bunch of really helpful people who I may never see again I made it to Seattle and am just three hours from departure to Japan.

The kicker about the whole production was the night before I actually considered a double alarm (cellphone plus alarm clock) but thought "this has never happened to me and I will engage in that degree of over-kill". However, as my favourite script writer would say, "turns out that was just the right amount of kill". I imagine at 4:00pm this afternoon my cats will find themselves rudely awakened from their afternoon nap.

So, I'm going to use this time to write (although I'm eyeing up the complimentary bar and frankly I'm thinking that its 5 o'clock somewhere). I will shoehorn this story into my blog by saying that I think this story illustrates rather usefully that sometimes you have to get another story off your mind before you can focus on writing.