What a day. I revised a lot of my novel. Must have gone through forty to fifty pages, revising, shaping, cutting.

Only afterwards when I saved it, and when I tried to open up the file again, the computer wouldn't let me. I couldn't copy, print, or open this file. This chapter (the new version anyway) is lost. Spent the evening on the phone with someone who knows more about computers and the diagnosis is a bad disk. I can access the other files on the disk, but not the chapter I worked on today. Argh. Not only did I lose my work from today, I had done some revision on it in the last month or two, so it's more than just today's work.

Have I learned anything about backing up files? Sure, this was a disk problem, which means I was putting the files on a disk, but did I save the revised files on the hard drive (or make up another back up disk)? Nooooooooooooooo. Will I make this mistake again? Shoot me if I do. I suck!

I have an older version of that file still (I do have the first draft of the novel yet) so tomorrow I'll do the same work I did today and, hopefully, even more.

RANT OFF

Things have been gearing up for the novel workshop in March. I'll have to send my novel to the rest of the participants around Feb. 10. I'm excited about it. That's why I did so much work today. Hey, a couple of Reggae coffees helped a lot tonight.

I wanna kick ass like Jenn. She just sent out her novel. Way to go, Jenn! I don't know if it was the first novel she wrote, or if it's the first novel she sent, but MY novel will be the first one I completed and sent, once I'm done with it.

It was a milestone when I finished the first draft of the novel. I need that next milestone of finishing the last draft and mailing it. I will be sending it to a publisher before I go to the workshop. It's a security thing for me, just to insure I don't keep it sitting in a drawer after a critique. At least it will be out there. I'm confident in this novel.

And in closing this down and up entry, another Wordo (for the fourth year in a row) has made it into a volume of Writers Of The Future. Ken Brady was a finalist in the first quarter of last year. WOTF called him today and said they'd like to publish it in this year's volume, and he'll be going to the workshop this summer. His story "Asleep in the Forest of the Tall Cats" was critiqued by the Wordos and I loved that story. So a big congrats to Ken!