National Novel Writing Month 2008

I wrote this post intending to publish it this past weekend, but then I had hard drive problems. But since I've already written this one, I wanted to publish it anyway. I'm writing the story that came to me this week at my son's Orchestra Concert and not the one I had outlined, but if I get totally stumped I may switch back. We'll see how things go.

So, here is the original post.

It's that time of year again. November. National Novel Writing Month.

In case you've never heard of it, you can go here and get a full and complete run down. The short rundown is that it's a challenge to write 50,000 words in thirty days, from November 1st to November 30th. I learned about it for the first time the year before last, but it was already November 22nd, so I didn't get involved. Last year I did it and won, I completed 50,000 words before November 30th. That was a great high, but the best thing about it was finding the community of writers.

NaNo, which is the shortened version of the name, has a very diverse website with many forums in which to chat with other writers, both local and not. There are meetups throughout the month where NaNo writers get together at local coffee shops, libraries, and anywhere else that has power and places to sit for hours on end. There's no obligation to go to a meet up, but I highly recommend it.

I also learned that I write much better if I don't worry about editing mistakes as I go along. NaNo is really about getting the words out and not worrying about the spelling mistakes and exact phrasing. That is for after the first draft. It really freed up my writing and my imagination. Even if you don't finish 50,000 words in 30 days, I recommend joining and giving it a shot. It can be a lot of fun.

I'm looking forward to this year's NaNo. I wrote an outline for a story, the second in a series I'm writing, but another story has popped up and now I'm not sure which one I'll write. Last year I had one idea but when it came time to write another story flowed out of nowhere. It's currently my favorite story of the ones I've written. We'll see what happens come November 1st. Care to join me?

Update On My Data Loss

Well, I have some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is the 5200 words from the story I was writing is gone. Well, I could spend hundreds of dollars on a retrieval service, but there is no guarantee that they'll get anything. And it's only 5200 words. It's not my whole hard drive. Everything else was backed up on my main machine.

The good news is I have a great father. He took pity on me, well, actually he had been planning it since the screen on the laptop was messed up anyway, but we went to the Apple store and got a new MacBook! :-) It's an early Christmas present.

A brand new machine with a screen that works! Woot! So, I really can't complain about the data loss from the old box.

I've already started to rewrite the story that I lost. I'm just glad that I didn't lose more of the story. Thanks to all who gave suggestions. I appreciate the help. Again I recommend backing up your data frequently. You never know when you'll need that backup.

Well, I'm off to resume writing my NaNo story. I still have 46356 words to go to win NaNoWriMo 2008!

The Loss of Data

Well, this wasn't a post I imagined I'd be writing. In fact, it wasn't the post I was going to publish today. I had another post all set up tellling everyone about this year's National Novel Writing Month. Unfortunately, bad things happened.

I back up my work regularly. I sync my laptop with my main machine every time I come with new data on it, and I save my work as I type without even thinking about it. But it seems I may have lost the first 5200 words of the novel I am writing for NaNoWriMo.

The back story to this is I am using a very old Macbook laptop that has been having problems with the backlight for the screen for almost a year and a half. I haven't gotten it fixed because the machine is so old and if I only open the top a couple inches the light works and I can read what I've written. I know, it's very sad, but hey, I'm cheap, and spending $200 - $300 dollars to fix it when a "new" Mac laptop can be had for a grand seems silly. And other than the screen, it worked fine. Until today.

I started writing yesterday and got just over 3000 words down. I didn't get to sync it with my main machine since we were heading out to a party last night. Today, I woke up with a killer migraine, but I still had this story screaming to get out. I was busily writing away when I hit the save keys and noticed the machine did not do its usual 'ding' to signify the save. I tilted the machine up and discovered most of the typing I had been doing since the last save wasn't there. I'm not sure what happened. When I clicked the mouse, the timer wheel popped up and the computer started to do something. I could hear it working, but it didn't seem to be doing anything. Then I couldn't click anywhere else and the wheel was still spinning. After a few minutes everything went dark. I shut it down and started it back up, and that's when the bad news hit me.

I got nothing. The machine was spinning, but I had a blank screen. This is not a good thing. I didn't even get to the apple logo. Over 5200 words, trapped in that damn little box. Arggh!

All is not lost yet though. My husband is a tech guru and he's trying a couple of things, but he doesn't look too hopeful. In the meantime, I'm venting here. And I'm warning others. Don't trust your machines. They can turn on you when you least expect it. Just keep that in mind when you use them so you don't fall victim to their evil plottings.