All posts by NewEngland_Muse

I'm a traditionally and self published author. I write in the genre of children and YA at the moment but working my way up to adults. I'm a sports loving, photo taking gal who loves to sing/dance to my own enjoyment. I love to laugh even at myself. I am also owned by 8 birds and 2 hamsters, and yes they know it. :)
memories, Mr.Gibson, WW II

Mr. Gibson:WW II

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Every town or city has a spot that we as people love to visit and hang out at. My husband and I are no exception to the rule. There is this small diner which has the flavor of home cooking written all over it.  It has its regulars like any other place where you walk in and the waitresses and owner alike will say hi and call out our name. Personally I like that.

One day last week I was sitting one table over from Mr. Gibson. He like myself comes to this place rather often. We were both waiting on someone for lunch. He struck up a conversation with me. This was not unheard of he is a friendly old man. Not being able to hear him clearly I walked over and sat down next to him while we waited. Mr. Gibson is a retired officer and he served in WW II. He wears his hat and pins that are attached to it just about every time we see him. The gentle old man never stands out and says what he has done for our country he takes it in stride. Unless of course you have him in a one on one and then the amazement comes out.

For the next few minutes I listened as he talked about his career and how he has led a good life. He talked about memories that no one of my generation can possibly imagine unless you are in the service. Just listening to him made me humble. I can only think on what he saw and felt but through him insight cames into view.

He is a main stay at this place and I hope to speak to him many times over. His words of wisdom fills no books on any shelves but they are still priceless. God Bless you Mr. Gibson.

Computer snafu, Manuscript, Writer

My Lost Manuscript Part 2

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2012-08-11 15.56.34

As I expressed my mood online to fellow writers, a mountainous of advice and tips came across as authors tried to help me out with suggestions that might work or had worked for them. Along came with sympathy and understanding that only writers can understand and heart-felt sorrow at what had happened to me. To be honest who else would truly understand what I was feeling now?  They listened to me rant and rave as I vented about what was happening to me. For that I am thankful. I was not alone even if it meant my book was gone and I would have to reconstruct it.

I told myself that I would put it to the side and give myself a chance to breathe. I would come back to this book later in the year. The thought of trying to do it now well I did not have it in me.  That evening I had a meeting with some fellow writers one that I almost canceled for my mood would have been foul.

Prior to going I decided to check out the current file and see what portion I had still. It contained 41 pages which was half my book. It was not completely gone.  Opening up the file I did a word count to see how far off from 20K I was. The counter gave me the same number I had from that early morning.  Something has to be wrong right? I checked again and sure enough it gave me the same number.

What the hell? OK don’t get to excited Sharon don’t hope to much I told myself. This could be another trick from the evil machine. So page by page I went down reading it in its entirety. My book was in tact. The computer had compressed my book eliminating the double spaces that I had included. I did not ask the machine to do this. I had saved it and moved on to working with my external hard drives the rest of the day. Why did it do so? I don’t know and neither does my husband. This man is the Bill Nye of the computer world. Trust me on this.  But my book was here but it had been shrunk. When I had opened this files I did not give them much thought for I had 82 pages that very morning. I had no reason to believe this was my book. Why would I?

Needless to say my heart is singing a song of joy and praise being very grateful for finding my novel. I don’t understand what happened but I don’t care. Well I don’t care for now. Hubby will be checking out my computer to get it in a better state of affairs so my mental state does not tank to this degree. It was not a virus, I do not use Windows. So we know that much and that is about all we do know.

So today I sit and write about my computer’s plot to take over my world. It won temporarily. But there is something to be said for being obsessive with our writings and saving it in as many places as we can. If I had not done that who knows what might have occurred.

I have added many words since that day as I press forward. The great scare of Jan 2013 is behind me.

Evil computer, Manuscript, Writings

My Lost Manuscript Part 1

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Friday Jan 11,2013 will forever be a day when my heart nearly stopped. That was the day my computer lost my novel of 20k.  I am part of a group of writers who are striving to write every day for the year 2013. It could be a paragraph, a page or even more. It does not matter so long that you write.

Some of us have made a personal word count to try to achieve on a daily basis. Well early Saturday I had accomplished my word count, saved the document and moved on with my life. I did not pay much attention to my computer as I primarily worked offline.  I had started to make a list of all my short stories and books and placed them in a chart plus in a folder so I had ready access to them. When I looked for the book that I had been working on just that morning I could not find the file. It was not on the desk top, documents, temporary files or the trash bin.

Panic did fill me as I looked at each folder one by one in case I had misfiled. No cigar. I had just done a back up of my computer the day before so there was that. Until I plugged it in and the computer would not could not open it up. My heart was falling fast at this point as it beat faster in its descent.  I saw three files on my desktop that had the name of my book. I opened each one up. One had a page count of 24, the other 32 and the last one 41. My page count that morning had been 80. Shit shit shit

The tears started to flow as the realization that it might be gone. Calling my husband up I asked for advice, he stated he would look at my computer when he got home.  I have always written my writings by pen and paper first, always. In fact the first 10k of this book was written by hand. But I decided to see if I could do it by computer and save the time. Lesson learned, never again. It takes more time but it saves the heart aches  As I stared at the compute screen the tears flowed faster. With that came the anger. I started to fuss and scream and yell at the stupid piss of shit computer that had dared to take my book away from me. How it had nerve as it mock me with files that had half the book as it teased me into a false hope that they were the book I was so desperately looking for.

I sat back in my chair and just sighed softly to myself. I had been so careful with my works. I have three external hard drives that I do back ups on a more than regular basis. I can’t chance on anything happening to my works. I am so careful it borders on paranoia. But yet here I was with a MS of 20k words and it was gone. The lovely part, yes I am being sarcastic, was when I did a file search it first told me no such file existed yet my desk top clearly had three versions of it. Then a few minutes later my computer told me oh yes you do have that file and it is in this spot. Upon going to the location no such file existed. Yes my computer had the upper hand and it knew it.

To Be Continued…