First Storm of The Year

I am so grateful fall and winter are finally here! You would be too if you didn't have a working air conditioning unit in your car! It's un-freaking-believable to have the season nip at my nose and to come in dripping wet from rain instead of sweat. We are so abundantly blessed! Okay, maybe it's just me. The rain is playing havoc with Mom's arthritis, she doesn't want to come out from under the heating blanket.


I think of how desperately the Bay Area and parts south need the rain, and how lucky we are to have it. It seems though every blessing is a double edged sword. If too much rain falls in the fire ravaged areas then it will cause ashy mud slides, and in some towns where the elected people didn't keep their word, will be underwater if the storm is as ferocious as the weatherman promised. For now though, I'm not going to think of the mud, the ash or the floating towns. I'm just going to enjoy the sound of the rain as it dances on the pavement to the song of wind in the rose bushes outside my window.

Writers Block, Thy Name Is Jealousy

I just finished reading The Host last night. I was too wiped from the Gartner Gala for Mom's 80th and about all I was good for was reading or sleeping. So, I read. I had been reading this on the treadmill at the gym, and it actually got me going to the gym for a while.

I love the book, but I also hate the book. I love it because it is a really good story, I hate it because it made me cry. I don't cry, as a general rule. It's too emotionally exhausting. So, I find other ways to express myself. I loved it because it had a happy ending, I hated it because it's made me feel like such a slouch with my writing. I can't get my family to read the book that I have written, how can I get strangers to read it. My friends like it, so that's somewhat consoling, but I still depend on my family for validation.

I know, I know, being jealous isn't a good thing to be, it's counter-productive, I'm not going to get anything really accomplished. I'm not going to be a Stephanie Meyer, I'm not going to be a Victor(ia) Hugo, or even a Jane Austen. We already have them, I just need to be me. But I want to make people cry, I want to publish a book that makes people sit and spend the whole day reading until they get to the end, just because they know they can't sleep unless they know the end. I want to be like that.

I'm whining, I know I'm whining. I need to go to the gym, I'm reading Harry Potter again, it's a simple book to read on the treadmill. Before The Host I read His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, which is the title of the trilogy of The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. All very good books. None of them made me cry, none of them made me wish I was *that* good. I would like to have the imagination to create the world the Phillip Pullman created, I don't think I'm wired towards fantasy. Yes, The Host is fantasy but it's more of a psychological romance, sacrifice and so on.

One of the things that I really admire of Stephanie Meyers is her willingness to stick to standards in her stories. When I say "stick to standards" I mean the LDS standards that she lives. There is some language, but no F-bombs, no degrading behavior human towards human, even though they didn't like the alien, they didn't treat her well at first but some were willing to look past it and that's where the story really takes off. I need to be true to myself, and believe that I have talent, that I am a good writer that people will read me like I read others. At least have hope to faith until faith becomes knowledge......

Fear and Loathing in Silicon Valley

First my desktop dies, then my car dies. I get my car out of the shop at a $700+ ransom and using my Internet-less laptop, and borrowing other laptops to get other things done beyond the walls of my temporary prison. Then, in a fit of rushed anxiety the housing of my thumb drive came off. One would think it wouldn't be too bad of a mishap, in light of my computer being down, my car being broken, oh, and did I mention I was running late to my appointment with the Cannery so I could fulfill my calling as home storage guru for the ward? But that one particular thumb drive had my current working document of my novel "Hearts of the Mothers". I had just concluded I had over 2/3rds finished. I tried to quickly save it to my laptop desktop but it wouldn't and it completely killed the application. The only soft copy that I had was the twenty six pages I started with in January. It would be okay if I hadn't written over 300 pages since then. I was dying inside.

I refused to curl up on the floor in a fetal position and give up though. I tried to put the housing back on but that didn't work, and I also knew that handling the actual components of the drive I ran the risk of sending some sort of static shock to them so I plugged it back into the laptop I was using and then my 4 gig thumb drive I've been meaning to update everything to and quickly moved all the files over. But when I tried to call the file up the computer wouldn't work. Even without the knowledge that my work was saved I went to the cannery, printed up my backup work there and then came home and took a sleeping pill and prayed that all will be well.

All is well. I was able to pull the actual 321 page document up and save it to my desktop on my laptop, saved it to the desktop of my sisters laptop and I will save it to this desktop of Patrick's laptop. I'm never EVER going to loose that much work again. I can't say that I hate computers, I think I hate more my dependency on them.