Oh, those crazy days of summer. Do you remember when you were a kid and how the long weeks of summer stretched out before you when school let out in May or sometimes in June if we’d had a bad winter and missed a lot of school days? You looked forward to time to relax and sleep late and read all the books you wanted to and maybe work on your tan at the pool. Of course I had to do some working on my tan in the fields helping my dad on the farm. Talk about a farmer’s tan. I guess I had a farmer’s daughter’s tan. But we had plenty of time for fun too. I guess when you have to spend some time in the tobacco patch or the corn field, it makes that time off seem even better.
Now summer comes and goes in a flash. They tell me that’s a sign of getting older. The years seem to get shorter and shorter and go by faster and faster. Someone told me a theory about that once. He said that when you’re five, one year is a fifth of your life, but when your fifty, it’s a fiftieth of your life. That changes the perspective a bit.
Anyway the year seems to be speeding along. And bringing that deadline closer for my next book. I’m making progress. At least typing words. Whether they’re good words or not remains to be seen. I’ve been in that middle part where I always wonder if what I’m writing is making any sense. I’ve nearly always hit that spot in all my books. The middle doldrums. I know I need to get some wind up to blow my story toward shore so I can type those two little words – the end. But sometimes I just keep fanning and fanning and the story doesn’t seem to be moving at all. So I just tell myself to keep writing words. If the sails of creativity won’t fill, then I’ll just keep rowing with persistence. And generally eventually I find that draft of wind and generally the part where I thought I was rowing so strenuously turns out to not be all bad either. One thing about it, the delete key works good on most computers and you can always get rid of what doesn’t sound good.
Since we’re talking about computers — I had another one of those computer weeks last weekend. The kind you don’t want to have where your computer dies on you without a warning. I think they should build in some kind of early warning system. Something that will yell “Danger! Five minutes until total crash! Print! Save! Pray!” They are always doing that on the sci-fi shows (Okay, maybe not the praying.) But on those shows, some computer geek always figures out the right button to push to save the ship before it totally dies. But you see, they have warning. They know they need to be pushing those buttons. My computer just stopped working. One minute it was fine. The next nothing worked. Of course it waited until I’d just finished working a couple of hours on the church bulletin. I hit the print button and nothing. I figured I’d knocked a cord loose or something. So I wiggle the connections. Isn’t that always what you do first? Then the mouse arrow took the studs. Well, of course the fix for that is turning the thing off and then back on. That’s when things got really ominous. It beeped at me and nothing came on. I couldn’t even open the CD tray. Panic time. Deadlines looming. Got to have a computer to work on my book.
So I go get on my husband’s computer and have to redo the whole bulletin. I was witty and smart in the first bulletin. I just got it done in the second one. It was my husband’s birthday and we were planning to go out and go shopping for him a new sport jacket in some bright color for him to wear when he sings. We got started late after my bulletin problems. And then a friend had a motorcycle wreck and we had to go check to be sure he was all right. And then the stores all closed earlier than we thought. But, thank goodness, the computer store stayed open a little longer than the sports jacket stores. So I bought a new computer. And now I’ve had to work all week learning to use the new programs and the new keyboard. It’s got the page down key where the end key used to be and I keep paging down to this blank area and wondering what the heck happened to the words I was trying to get to the end of. Sigh! I guess I’ll learn to use it someday. Then my preacher, who also works on computers, fixed the old computer or says he can and he had a good deal on a notebook. So I have a new computer, a new notebook, and an old computer that will be good as new soon. That should keep me going for a while. Long enough to get this book finished. But believe me I’m backing up every way there is to back up.
And poor Darrell still hasn’t gotten that new sport coat.
Hope you have a great week. Remember if you haven’t signed up to be in the drawing for The Outsider, send me an e-mail and I’ll put your name in the pot. I should get my author’s copies in a couple of weeks and I’ll be doing the drawing then. Ann