Spitting Words

There are times when pushing the words out is about as difficult as getting my youngest to eat. Sure the words come out just like that blueberry he shoved into his mouth, but they're awful and I hit the backspace button while he simultaneously spits the mushed blue ball out of his mouth. At least I'm not the one screaming about it.

But those moments have been coming less often. Not the blueberry spitting, he's actually rather good at that, but the forced writing moments. As I've slid back into as much of a writing routine that I can structure I've found the pauses a little shorter and the writing a little easier. It's helped that I've had Saturday's at my disposal, which often means I'm up at the Books-a-Million cafe writing until I cap out my iced coffee limit.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day this past weekend. My husband was a dear and presented me with this little treasure; chocolate with the nutritional information blacked out. I'm fairly certain that there's nothing better.

Yet Another Word Loss

Thanks to my wonderful husband, who helped to write the technical part of this post.

Saturday evening I planted myself in the Books-a-Million cafe armed with an iced coffee (unsweetened with soy milk) and a bottle of water to squeeze in a couple hours of writing. Certain that I had synced Google Drive on my laptop before leaving the house I didn't bother connecting to the Internet before opening my novel.

And I was about two-thousand words short. The cafe was packed so I silenced the "Mother fucker" that was quelling in my throat and instead, on the verge of tears, called my husband.

That was the second time that had happened. The first time I opened up Scrivener from my Google Drive to find that two-thousand words were missing I frantically flew back and forth between my desktop and laptop opening and re-opening the document, hoping to find those misplaced words staring back at me from the screen as if they'd never left. No such luck, and I begrudgingly chalked it up to forgetting to save. But after losing four-thousand words of a novella from a crashed hard drive and two separate incidences with Google Drive I've managed to lose a whopping eight-thousand words in less than a month's time.

I wanted to cry and maybe even throw my iced coffee, although I'm certain that the man rifling through mountains of paper-clipped documents at the table in front of me wouldn't have cared for that.

Thanks to my husband's computer prowess and my undeniably fabulous Googling skills we were able to figure out where everything went wrong. If you use Scrivener (or any writing software that automatically backs up) and a cloud storage device such as Google Drive or Dropbox, here's how to avoid losing your work.

• When you open up your cloud storage device be sure to wait until it has finished syncing. If you open it up before it has had the chance to sync you will be opening up the old file, whether it's an hour old or two weeks old. Make sure you wait for it to sync.
• Double check Scrivener's backup settings. Mine were the default settings which were set to backup whenever a file was opened. This is an awful idea. If you accidentally open up the wrong file you automatically back it up, overwriting your most recent file. If needed, adjust them. To change Scrivener's settings, go to Tools > Options. Under the Backup section, make sure the "Turn on automatic backups", "Back up on project close" (optional), and "Back up with each manual save" are all checked. Uncheck "Compress automatic backups as zip files". On Retain backup files, select the largest: Only keep 25 most recent backup files. This is to help to prevent word loss before the oldest file is rewritten. Finally, Backup location. On both my desktop and laptop they are pointing to Google Drive with each computer backing up to a separate folder within the cloud service. Apply for all computer and you are all set.

Hope this helps someone else!

I am a Writer

Every hour that I've spent writing, each scrapped story or novel tossed into the trash can (or the recycle bin, thank you Microsoft), and every last moment for the past sixteen years has been leading towards one dream: to be a published author.

Recently I've replaced "I like to write" with "I'm a writer", but I'm still reaching out, grasping for the title "author". I want to walk into a bookstore and weave my way through the aisles to find my book alphabetized among the stacks of novels. And, if we're being totally and completely honest, I'd love nothing more than to be able to help support my family through writing. Which I suppose is why when my husband shoos me out the door to go spend a few hours writing in the Books-A-Million cafe he waves away my protests of guilt at leaving him with both kids, and insists that he's making an investment for our future.

I'm feeling particularly poignant about the future of my writing career today. Perhaps its because my husband biked to work in the sprinkling rain so that I could have the van to take the kids grocery shopping with me, or maybe it's because everything just feels right this time around with about 8,000 words deep into my current novel.


So what about you? What is your writing goal?

Writing Therapy

Yesterday my phone rang while I was preparing breakfast. Normally I don't answer the phone then, instead opting to listen to my Doctor Who ringtone while the coffee maker hisses and gurgles to life with earthy coffee. I'm a lot more pleasant after I've had coffee.

I decided to answer anyway. It was my dad, and from the tone of his voice my first worry was my mom.  Instead,  he told me to call my mom,  one of my cousins had passed the night before.

This is one of the things that sucks about the military,  you can't just go be with family. When I had the opportunity I secluded myself and did the only thing I could make sense of; write. I pounded out about 4,000 words yesterday.

And to my cousin Sabrina, who lit up a room with her wide smile and could have me on the floor laughing, I love and miss you.

What a Wonderful Day for a New Bookcase

A reader never has enough bookcases. For a brief period of time a new one might go up in the living room or at the end of the hallway next to the cluster of pictures that haven't been updated in two years, but before long it's shelves will be filled with the piles of books that have sat near the other overflowing bookcases. And if there's any room left (what a travesty!) you'll need to go ahead and buy some new books.

Long story short, we need a new bookcase.

I recently started Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. So far I'm enjoying it. Cannie's struggle with weight and the ensuing self torment is easy for me to relate to. But I've liked it so much that I also picked up Little Earthquakes and Certain Girls, also by Jennifer Weiner. However, I already have at thigh-high pile of books to read and re-read. Now perhaps that's not too impressive as I barely reach five foot four, but you get the picture.


What is everyone else reading lately?

Crashed Hard Drive

If you write on a computer you need to back up everything that you write. Common sense, right? You would think so. However, the first 4,755 words of my Camp NaNoWriMo novella are now stuck in the deep darkness known as my crashed hard drive.

My husband has been trying to save those few words if nothing else since yesterday, even spending most of his lunch break attempting to figure out what went wrong. And the poor guy already does the same thing for other people's computers all day long.

So here's a friendly PSA. Back up, back up, back up.

Ripping out the Seams

A little over a year and a half ago I received a sewing machine from my husband for our second wedding anniversary. I dabbled a bit in playing with the different pretty stitches (zig-zag anyone?), made my daughter a horribly short and ill-fitted dress, and sewed up several old t-shirts to make new grocery bags. The bags are wonderful except baggers commonly mistake them for, well, just t-shirts, and kind of hold them out to me between their forefinger and thumb as if I've thrown soiled laundry in with my grocery bags.

But with the Renaissance Festival fast approaching I decided to whip that sucker back out. Here is the top half of my daughter's dress so far:

After dutifully pinning all of the fabric to the pattern and cutting everything out I felt ecstatic. All those neat pieces of fabric pinned to soft, crinkly paper just showed so much potential. All I had to do was take those pieces and fit them together. Easy, right?

When I ripped out perhaps my fourth or fifth seam I slapped my seam ripper down on the table and said, "I fucked the dress up."

"What?" My husband asked.

"I fucked. It. Up." I repeated.

Perhaps a bit over the top. OK, a lot over the top.

After I calmed down I sat back down at the table and began to pop the seams that I had sewn awry. And the thing that's nice about ripping out tiny little stitches is that it gives you time to think.

With writing I always seem to be in the midst of re-. Rewriting, redoing, re-planning, re-everything. I never quite peg things down right the first time. Or even the second or third. Sometimes it's from jumping in too fast. The rush of writing, something, anything takes me over and drags me along for a frantic dash across the keyboard. Other times it stems from the story taking an unexpected turn even through the most detailed of planning. When the story is laid out on crinkly pieces of paper it seems so easy. Put this here, have him screw up there, resolution over that hill. Done and done.

As I pulled out the rest of a basting stitch done all wrong (I can't be the first person who forgot to change the stitch length, right?) I completely changed my novel that I'd been working on before Camp NaNoWriMo. Nothing short of a complete rewrite can salvage it, but I think I'm OK with that.


How is everyone doing with Camp or the A - Z Blogging Challenge?