Do you remember the old days? You know, when people had typewriters? Can you imagine writing a full length book on one now? All the mistakes you have to correct? All the paper you waste? How you can’t cut and paste and move whole scenes from one location to another?
If you believe that’s terrible, think of a time when all books were written by hand! And I’m not talking about writing pages like I do when I need to get away from the computer and just focus on writing, then typing them up on Word when I’m ready to. But whole books that were just purely written by hand. Try not to make any mistakes!
So what happens when your computer crashes?
That’s what happened to me. First, the electricity went out. I was in the middle of edits on Jaguar Pride. I’m sure I wasn’t happy. I stared at the black screen for a moment, thinking that surely the last words, well, not the VERY last words as they would have been lost, but most of the 2 hours of changes would have been saved as I have it set to save every minute, because of other cataclysmic occurrences like this one.
Surely. And then the electricity came back on and the saving of my mss was the least of my worries. My computer wouldn’t come back on. The blue light says it is, and I hear a tiny, little, itty bitty stirring sound like it’s trying to come on, very faintly, and that’s it. No computer. Just a blue light.
So I try everything. Check out the connections. Unplug everything. Replug everything. Try a different electric socket. Nada. Nothing. Zilch.
I dig out my laptop and pulled up my story, that thankfully, I had saved on my external hard drive, and so, I had some of it. Do you know how much I can type in a minute? Maybe I need to save every 15 seconds.
*sigh*
I tried several things all over again, still no success with the computer. So now I have to take it into the shop. And hope that the verdict isn’t too bad.
But if I’d had to, I would have been writing the old, old way… by hand. Because the show… or … the story must go on!
Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com
I just purchased a new computer and my tech savvy friend told me that the constant power interruptions and fluctuations had something to do with the demise of my old one, so I got a battery backup for the new one. Since you and I live very close, you may suffer the same problem. We may not use the same electric provider but I bet the same people are in charge of maintaining the infrastructure. I am surely no computer guru, probably shouldn’t even be allowed to use the word, but just thought I would share my experience. Cheers, Tom
Thanks, Tom, I’m definitely getting one! I took it to Best Buy and they said that the power source was fine, so was the video card. It had to be the mother board. So have to get a new computer. Well, or mother board, but I figure I need an upgrade for all the work I do on one so it would be worth it to buy a new one. Thanks again! 🙂
I’m so sorry , I was hoping you had it fixed. Our lives are run by computers, I don’t even remember my husbands phone number.
Me too, Lori. Last time I thought it had gone out for good, it was the monitor. *sigh*