As Swine Flu continued to spread today, my inner survivalist tracked down a good survival handbook, a water purification system, and a solar powered/hand crank radio to add to our emergency supplies.
Hee, hee.
Then my more dominant inner pragmatist took over and together we dashed off a revised and recreated outline for Prairie Apocalypse, the Nanowrimo novel that suffered major losses in my recent laptop meltdown (forgive the terrible, working title... it will change, I swear). I poured all of my jitters over this pandemic that may not develop into developing a pandemic that will catalyze revelations about relationships, community, and the meaning of life among an endearing and endangered cast.
Until today, I have been avoiding any effort to recreate what I lost when Gateway ate two months of work I failed to back up. I found the task depressing. I was also certain that any recreated version would be a meek, pale shadow of the original.
Luckily, the outline I ferociously assembled today is, if anything, an improvement on the previous one. The rewrite (part two) can begin today... assuming no actual pandemic competes for my attention.
bearing witness to the fleeting moments of growing two little girls, an edible backyard, a baby-to-be, chickens, and a novel
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4 comments:
safe on this side of the country!!
hope the words are flowing... :)))
Oh, gosh, my parents were freaking out today about the Swine Flu. I think they're afraid we're all going to die from it. If we do, I guess we do. Wow... so much hoopla. I don't want to catch it, but what are ya gonna do? Oh yeah, go into survival mode... *shakes head and flips open survival handbook*
Sorry to hear about that manuscript. Good luck with the rewrite!
Thankfully, the first draft of my manuscript is in tact... But I lost all of my notes, musings, and the revised outline for the second draft, along with my first 20 pages (which I had really put a lot into).... not a huge loss, but I can only say that because I've very nearly recovered it all.
Ha... I'm using the "pandemic apocalypse" topic of my novel as a great excuse to do "research" about going into survival mode... does that mask my craziness? Probably not, but I'm trying! Surely nothing will come of this except maybe a second draft that is significantly better than the first!
I had a similar thing happen to me. I had written the book, but then decided to scrap most of it and try again. I outlined the new version and started writing it, when my USB drive died. I hadn't backed it up on my puter because I thought this was safer. ARGH!!! I was so disgusted, it took me a month before I'd attempt to write anything. Then, I tried to re-create my outline by memory. Of course, I wasn't able to do that perfecly, but I believe this newest version is even stronger. Now, I back it up on my computer, on my husband's computer and on my new USB key.
Hey, if you know anything about registering a domain name or setting up a website, pop over to my blog and fill us in. Thanks.
Lynnette Labelle
http://lynnettelabelle.blogspot.com
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