Love Your Work Enough to Hate it

Yes, you heard right. Go ahead. Hate it.

Sometimes your work really does suck.

The first book I wrote is wonderful in places, but it's flawed in too many ways to be fixed without a major rewrite.

My MC’s 19, a risky age, being too old for YA, too young for adult. And it has structural failure—the main conflict, dilemma, desire is resolved before the climax, and it should hold taut until at least that point. The work also relies too much on coincidence and may break true FBI procedure. I love quality enough to know this book just isn't publishable.

Practicing, getting your work critiqued and reading about craft & for pleasure will help you recognize the good, the bad and the ugly in your work.

When I wrote my second novel, Kings & Queens, I better understood structure. In that, readers and my MC are aware of a massacre plot in chapter 1, and the whole truth about the why, who and how is not revealed to readers or my MC until the epilogue.

Not everyone can do that, and I’m not saying you have to stretch it THAT far, but to have a hooky work—which is the best kind IMO—the big concern presented at the onset shouldn’t be resolved until as late as possible, and definitely not until the climax.

Sometimes your work IS good, but needs the perspective of others besides your mom to make it oh-so-fabulous.

Don’t be afraid of criticism. Yes, that's your baby, and yes, you have a delicate soul, but most critters want to help you take your work to a higher level. Take what works for your story and ditch the rest.

Hate your work enough to be objective and at least consider they may be right. After several people complained of things being confusing, I changed things to bring clarity.

And sometimes your work Is almost ready for shelves but could use another glance over.

Definitely do it. Go over it one more time, looking at everything: flow, meter, voice, grammatical errors, wordiness. I’ll probably keep toiling and tweaking until I’m signed.

With my edit this past spring spring though, in trying to get work count down, I stripped out nearly every adjective and got sentences down to bare bones, and the writing lost its sparkle and MY VOICE. Not good! So, I ended up replacing a lot of what I cut and just decided I'd reached my word count and that was that.

Well, I really need a much smaller word count. So this week, I decided to go at it again, but I set out with a different tactic. Here are the ways I was able to trim, no lie, 1300 words from my first SEVEN chapters. Yippee! And the cool thing is the scenes don't seem any emptier. They're not sparse or choppy. The flow is nice. I'm very happy. It's just kind of embarrassing that I had that much to trim and didn’t see it. You can keep these tips in mind if your work is in need of a major hack-and-slash.

Ø For the most part, keep modifiers to one per noun. Slay extra extras. Removing ALL strips out color, so don’t do that. Rather, go for vivid, concise pictures. Is it really important to say his polo shirt’s blue? If he gets mistaken for someone else wearing a similar shirt, then his shirt color factors into plot. Keep it. Just consider everything, whether it's needed or not.

Ø Choose punchy verbs over an adverb-verb combo.

Ø Omit unnecessary dialogue tags, pointless action or anything that disrupts flow during a conversation.

Ø Examine dialogue and try to say the same thing in fewer words. I hacked off so much when I broke speech down to the guts.

Ø Take a machete to exposition. Since it’s the Narrator spilling info, it pulls readers from the scene and somewhat breaks POV. Examine those scene-killers, hack away, keeping only the most vital bits.

Originally in ch. 1, I stopped to describe this hangout called Spanky’s. It really wasn't needed. I offed 75 words, keeping the one line that held some voice--a mini-golf/ice cream shop gone wild.

And chapter 4 had four paragraphs describing my character Derek’s lousy upbringing, thought process, fears, etc. I cut 200 words and it's now one spiffy graph. What I did keep relates to his thoughts.

Ø Do some telling. I know we’re told to show not tell, but in many cases, showing adds words. Showing is important for engagement, but if you’re a writer with 90-95 show percentage, don’t be afraid to take it down to 80.

Ø Kill your darlings. Sometimes we love the specific way we word sentences, but look at each construction with fresh eyes and think, can I convey this tighter? Be ruthless. Rewrite and reorganize sentences rather than just trimming down what you’ve got so you can maintain voice.

Ø Look for extraneous articles, prepositions, that’s, evens and other extras that can be cut off and not missed.

Ø Perform magic with better word choices. [e.g. He went up the stairs, two at a time…He whooshed up the stair…He double-stepped the stairs.]

Ø Get dirty with talk and thoughts. Dialogue doesn’t need to be perfect English and thoughts can be broken because people don't always think in complete sentences. [e.g. "Can’t wait for football season to start!"...or "Goin' home?"..."Excited about your new job?"...Boss sucks!]

And people blend many, many words--gotta, wanna, kinda, sorta, hafta, should've, that'd (contraction for that would...That'd be okay.). Stripping out formality, when it’s fitting for the speaker, not only trims words, it helps your characters seem more real and you less stuffy.

Ø Expand your vocabulary. Sometimes a perfect, juicy word can replace two or three. [e.g. come up with v. devise.]

Ø And don't forget to remove as many filters as you can like he saw, she could sense. Just name the stimulus or spill what the character is thinking or experiencing. [e.g. She wondered if he could read her mind. v. Could he read her mind?] If you're firmly locked into one POV, such trims won't be jarring at all.

Strangely, with all this excess baggage shed out of my manuscript, I feel refreshed and exhilarated, knowing my work is cleaner and overall better.

Don’t be afraid to have a love-hate relationship with your work. You’ll be a much better writer for it.

All the best!

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

The New Me, Writing Tidy & Compact

Yesterday, I read a bit of the first version of Kings & Queens, pre-critique. Wow! Total eye-opener! What a mess!

I had good plot construction and well-developed characters, but I had a tendency to overwrite, still do at times, but this was way worse.
Often times, I see newbies making this same mistake. They choose wordy fluff and flowery rills, going the roundabout way of saying everything, because they think it makes them sound more writery or literary. All it does is create sludge for readers and scream "amateur" to pros.

Of course it's cool to use unique phraseology, to have lush description at times. That's what gives you your voice and your story some texture. I'm talking about overwriting when you don't need to.

There's a huge difference between:

Majesty chuckled, traversing from grass to dirt, finding it humorous that kids still gave credence to the tale her friend, Alec, had spun eons ago about the spooks, these wood-dwelling people-turned-creatures.

and this:

Traversing from grass to dirt, Majesty chuckled that Alec’s tale about the wood-dwelling people-creatures endured.
Man. That top one's terrible, right? Don't I know it! Major suckatude!

In my later versions, I'd stripped out a lot of this, but for the past two weeks, I've been trimming more and more, burning off everything extraneous. In my first seven chapters, I removed 1300 words. 1300 words! That's insane! I'm almost embarrassed, AFTER several edits, I still had that much garbago.
During my last word extraction, I took out extra adjectives, unnecessary dialogue tags and the like, but a ton of that tinkering made my work too dry and stilted. So I put some back in and considered my work done. Not!

I just went about it the wrong way. Now, I'm rewriting and rearranging, blending actions and sharpening dialogue to get things tight and tidy. I have exactly the same scenes, but they're tighter and neater.

Since I'm going YA with this crossover novel of mine, my word count needs to be nearer to YA range, which usually caps off at about 80-85,000, slightly more for literary, epics and fantasy. Mine's suspense. So all this cutting is necessary for me if I want to succeed.

In summer, I was at 106,000 words—nuts I know—and two weeks ago, almost 101,000. I'm currently at 95,500, but I'm only finished with 11 chapters. I think I can get it to 90,000 or lower. It would still be large, even for a multilayered, upper-YA like mine, and that's not as glaringly horrid as a 100 g's and change.

Thanks to my wonderful critters from TNBW, I've come a long, long way from that wordy nerd I once was. Now I'm just a nerd...with a more concise delivery.
Write on, my peeps. And be direct. It'll save you lots and lots of time in the editing round.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Editing Glitch

The long, drawn out editing process can do strange things to your mind, especially when you’re on your fourth, fifth or sixth pass through your manuscript. There’s so much to look for. Grammatical errors, places that drag, plot holes and glitches, passive voice, mistakes in continuity, misplaced modifiers, sentences ending with prepositions, too many be-verbs, adverbs, adjectives, ugly people. You also have to comb through your work, looking for crutch phrases or overused words.

In the first novel-length disaster I wrote, snickered was my word of choice. In almost every scene, I had someone snickering. It’s difficult to come up with another word to describe that Ernie laugh…the one that’s through the nose, kinda snorty, not even close to a guffaw or a chuckle…it’s a snicker. For some reason, the characters in my book were only finding things sort of funny and not hilarious enough to warrant a full-bellied laugh. As a snicker replacement, you can use sniggered or tittered, but too many of those appear and read quite silly. I try to only use one of those offbeat snickers per book. Same thing with guffaw, if it graces the pages at all.

In my latest completed novel, Kings & Queens, my main roach is huffed. While editing, I'm finding there’s a whole lot of huffin’ going on. J.L. Campbell so kindly pointing out the overabundance of huffing, so I can exterminate the bulk of those pesky verbs.

One day after hours of editing, the word THE started jumping out at me from every angle. THE was annoying me, totally and completely, until I realized its importance. It is difficult to write a story without that word, although I'm sure some feisty soul would be willing to take up the NO-THE Challenge, but I can’t even write a post without it. THE is greatly overshadowed by snazzier words like ostentatious, sprightly or sardonic. They possess flair, while THE generally goes unnoticed, sitting in the background, dissolving in shadow, waiting for recognition. I definitely recognized it. THE should be lauded. It does, after all, own total unsung power. A work of fiction can include zingy treasures like precipitation, chimera, onomatopoeia or zephyr, but without conjunctions, prepositions and articles gluing those ritzy, glitzy words together, stories, articles, blogs, etc. wouldn't make sense. [The jury's still out on poetry, which sometimes fails to make sense with or without our beloved, trusty THE. That artistic expression is in a league of its own.]

When editing, look for word and fall-back phrase infestation. Squash those buggers right quick. Some reader will notice and it will pull them out of the story. Of course, now that I brought the all-powerful THE to the stage, front and center, you may be annoyed by its seepage throughout your work. As long as every sentence does not start with THE, same thing with He, She, [insert character’s name] or I, THE will go unnoticed, like it always has from the beginning of the English language. Keep polishing. And then find a point to let go and hunt for an agent, if you don't have one already. You could be the next, great undiscovered talent, soon-to-be best-selling author. Get crackin'.

~ Signing off and sending out Cyber hugs

Finding Your Characters in Questions

Sometimes characters spring to life easily through your fingertips and other times they kind of plod out without much fanfare or dimension. If you're halfway through with your story or struggling to get it going, go back to character. Even if you have a thin plot, you can make a character-driven novel interesting and gripping, as long as you make your MC someone worthy to read about and follow.

You may need to go back to the character drafting board.

You already have your who, but have you asked "what" questions? What questions are pretty generic, just digging into the surface of desire and motivation.

What does she want most?

What is or will be her biggest obstacle in getting it? Internal and external.

What does she do under pressure?

What does she fear most?

What secondary things does she want?

What will stand in her way at getting those desires?

What does she regret, dream about, fixate on, run to or escape with?

What habits enhance or hinder her choices and actions?

Once you've answered several "what" questions, you can delve deeper into the psyche by answering the "whys".

Why does she want to dye her hair pink? Why pink, why not auburn?

Why does she hate her father?

Why does she believe she'll never find love?

Why is her room painted black?

Why does she want revenge?

Answering those questions will give you a more fully developed character and spawn other questions and surprise you with things you didn't know. Once you know who your character is, what they want and why, brainstorm the hows, which takes everything you learn and puts it into action. Discovering the hows is the best way you show character rather than tell.

How will she get the attention of the millionaire when he has that selfish twit Bambi on his arm?

How will she get home or to some place safe when her car dies in the middle of nowhere, at night?

How will she get away from her kidnappers?

How will she accomplish her goal?

How will she deal with moving to a new locale?

It makes an even better story if your characters fail in their hows, if things go awry or set her three steps back. So brainstorm the "hows" of destruction and deterrence as well.

Once you answer questions as such, your characters will cease to be flat; they'll be well-rounded and seemingly real, and in knowing them so deeply, you'll then be able to build a more gripping plot in the same creative breath. Anyone can tell the difference between a stick figure and a flesh-and-blood person. Aim to create characters on the later end of the spectrum, then those babies of yours will be unforgettable.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Sounds: Aid or Distraction?

I'm kind of weird, in case you haven't guessed. Okay, not kind of. A lot weird. For instance, I don't read the way normal people read. Most people can grab a book and sit down in a library or curl up on the couch in a quiet house with some tea in hand and read away.

Not me.

I've always needed some kind of noise to read: people talking, the TV on, music in the background. For some strange reason, needing to block out noise helps me focus and I can then absorb the information. The more boring and complex the book, article or essay, the more chaos I need to actually HEAR the words.

In college whenever I had to read something dry and dull like Economics or Government, I'd show up early to a basketball game and read chapters during the warm-up. That worked perfectly. I could get my homework in and then have fun by watching basketball.

But this little issue of mine made it impossible for me to take reading comprehension tests. The actual testing method contradicts my strange process of absorption and comprehension.

First, you must read boring material—and several blocks, not just one—in a fast amount of time in total silence, except for the blasted, ticking clock. Of course you can hear the clock eating away at your grades, dragging you closer and closer to an F or a dunce cap with each deafening second. Then you must answer questions to prove you can read those boring tidbits, but you can't really READ said paragraphs because that's NOT how you read. Awesome!

In Third Grade, they even stuck me in Special Ed because they were concerned about my "inability to comprehend", but being 8, I couldn't explain that the test just didn't work for me. If I could have had a walkman and no dripping hourglass, I would have aced the test every time. I've never had a problem comprehending anything, aside from maybe medical jargon or legalese. Noise is just a necessity for me and not just with reading.

Now, I require some kind of background noise while penning a novel to keep straight and finish off my various threads. Being a just-wing-it girl rather than an outliner, music helps me to stay focused and on track. And often times, music feeds my fire and drive as well.


Here are a few of the songs that I found inspiration in while penning Sapphire Reign—which I'm close to wrapping up.

Field of Innocence by Evanescence. This completely encompasses my storyline and tone. If I can acquire the rights for a reasonable cost, I want to use this song for my long trailer.



When the Children Cry by White Lion.



Another Brick in the Wall (Here's part 2) by Pink Floyd.



Stop Crying Your Heart Out by Oasis



So, when you're writing do you prefer the silence of a snowy day or some kind of noise like music, TV or people talking? And do you find inspiration in music? Just wondering.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Are You Striving to Become a Champion?

I've always longed to be the featured champion on a box of Wheaties. Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead and laugh, but when I was a small kid, I possessed an incredible degree of power and strength. I beat every kid in my class in callisthenic, strength and endurance tests in nearly every event, especially those involving running and jumping. And learning dance only provided me with greater agility and breakaway speed—handy when you're playing Wide Receiver BTW. [Yes, of course! Tomboy here.] In 1984, I even beat Gold Medalist, Evelyn Ashford’s time by a hair in a 100-meter dash with 10.63 versus her Gold Medal/World Record time of 10.76.

But all that greatness and potential is lost. No Wheaties box for me. Other than an occasional moment of playtime, I’m not really as sporty as I once was. I certainly can't Jazzercize my way into the champion-seeking hearts at General Mills. And hills STILL own me in my running, sometimes wiping me out more than another two more miles would. Even if I breeze up those monsters with ease, running won't get me there. I'm slower than a slug now, not even close to the blazing flash of lightning I once was. I don't know what happened.

No...I do know.

I never really strove to develop and hone my skills, to increase my strength, to improve. Because it all came naturally, I didn't feel the need to practice or pressure to get better. I beat everyone who ever dared to race me, boy or girl. I WAS a winner...a champion, owning a slightly better time than a World Record holder and Olympic Gold Medalist "Eeee-ven"...sans Snagglepuss from Laff-A-Lympics. "Heavens to Murgatroyd!"
To become a champion, and remain one—in whatever your passion may be—, you need to bring your A-Game every time, carrying the certainty that you can attain your dream and also have it snatched away at any moment by someone else. If you don’t act as though you have heat on your heels, it can all be lost. Writers should approach their passion for words with the same intensity athletes do their games, races, matches, meets and competitions. So, what can you do to be Wheaties-worthy?

LEARN THE RULES: As rules exist in sports, there are many in writing beyond grammar and we hear them plenty: show don't tell, no head-hopping, no passive voice, no abundance of adverbs or adjectives, no be-verbs, no huge blocks of internalization, no breaking the fourth wall, no stopping action for long blocks of description…

Once you understand what the rules are and why they're important, you can learn to break them according to your story's needs. If you know what you are doing and why, then you can demonstrate this deliberateness.

Like with passive voice, let’s say you’re in First Person and your character IS passive or sees everything as a martyr or victim or is unreliable, then a sense of detachment and distance might be appropriate. Or if you understand that hanging three adjectives on every noun creates drag over pretty language, you can then choose to use this technique when you do want to slow things down, maybe increase suspense, like describing a room where everything looks creepy to the observer.

Familiarize yourself with the rules, particularly those regarding narratives and structure. If you don't have a firm grasp of narratives, how will you be able to spot head-hopping when it creeps into your story or know if your work would present better in Omniscience? You need to know the difference.
No matter what your story calls for, you can then demonstrate you're a true player in the game and not just flying by the seat of your pants, doing whatever you want.

PRACTICE, TRAIN & STRETCH: To become excellent, you need to keep working. Push yourself in uncomfortable directions and attempt things you never thought you would. I tried a celebrity vampire story when I didn't think I could do it, and the story came out great. It didn't win the contest I entered, but I'm so glad I got it done. Choose a difficult task or goal for your character or a crazy outcome and wrestle your way there. Practice and try something new and different like a villanelle or flash fiction. The more you stretch, the better you will become.

GET IN THE GAME: Once you have the playbook in hand, get in the game, what are you waiting for!? You can comb over it again and again, but you’re never gonna know your story’s worth or what you’re capable of if you don’t put yourself out there. Find some critters, adopt a thicker skin and let your baby be ripped to shreds. I know exposure is scary and that it's painful because writing is so soul-baring, but you need to get in the game and risk some injury if you want to become a champion.

When you’re aware of your weaknesses, you can adapt your methods, rid your bad habits and make your work indubitably stronger. Even becoming aware of a little thing like repeat words—“huffed” for me—and fixing that will improve a work. You likely wouldn’t notice such a thing on your own. You need feedback, desperately, so get it. Once your work is polished and shiny, you’re ready to seek expert opinion and publication. Go! Get in the game.

PLAY WITH SPIRIT: In order to enjoy writing and make it as engaging as possible, you need to find your own style and voice. People can help you along, give you guidance, offer suggestions, but only you can tell the story brewing inside you and innately know the best way to tell it. You may need to work and wrestle and dig deep to find your voice, but once you do, your words will string together much more smoothly, your characters will come to life much more easily and your plot turns will surprise you. If you’re just writing to get words down or meet a contractual obligation, it will show. Don’t lose your soul’s fire. It’s normal to have down days, to get disheartened and discouraged, but stay in the game, maintain your energy and excitement, stay focused and be true to yourself.

HAVE A VISION OF SUCCESS: Where do you want to be as a writer? What do you hope to achieve? Visualize that. Don't just picture it in your mind; learn what you need to do in order to make that happen, set goals and work at getting there. There are tons of books and online resources, including agents' blogs, that give you the tools you need to write well and get attention. Seeing yourself as the champion of your dream will help you maintain a positive attitude even when all hope seems lost. Your vision of success may need to change, and that's fine; adapt as you go along.

DON’T QUIT: If your work ends up being not as wonderful or as well-received as you assumed, that’s okay. Start over, change things up or write something else. The first novel I wrote has great elements, especially the romance between the adorable characters, but it depends too much on coincidence, and taking out one thing would collapse the whole rickety thing. It's in a purple folder somewhere and that's likely the only binding it will ever be in. If you write something that isn’t suitable for mass consumption, that’s okay. Try again. Very few people are fabulous on their first go. It can take several efforts before you have a winner. Stay tenacious. Even if you don’t get validation in the publishing world or never sell one self-published book beyond your family members and friends, don’t stifle your creative breath, don’t quiet those characters crying out for birth, don’t put down the pen. Keep doing your best for YOU.

Will I ever be on Wheaties everywhere? Doubt it. Not unless General Mills considers plume athleticism worthy of their boxes. Maybe then I'll land up there for my most awesome excellence. It takes just as much, if not more, determination, wits and skill to be a master of words—words that can stir laughter, draw tears, sooth a soul, infuse hope, empower, change a life—as it does to catch a 4th-and-goal touchdown pass from the 2 to win the Super Bowl.

Don't just write; become a champion, great enough to be on Wheaties.
~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Can People Duplicate Themselves?

Cuz that's what I need. More copies of ME to write out all my ideas. I'm bursting with them. But that many freaks running around would disrupt balance in the world and it might actually implode. I suppose it's a good thing, that I have more ideas than I know what to do with.

Bit by inspiration, I wrote a scene for another book this morning. So now, I have the first chapters written for three books and no time to work on any of them since I'm currently trying to finish my sequel and querying agents.

I have a goal to be done with my book by the end of the year, but now I NEED to be done with it, so I can move on to editing and start one of my new novels. The other problem is this particular book is Christian, but edgy Christian, not the CBA kind. It's more the independent/small publisher kind, or even the self-publish kind, because old ladies will certainly shout non-euphemisms at me—cuz euphies are bad too—try, BLAST, says Steeple Hill—and throw tomatoes and pocket Gideons.


Not that I have a problem with Christian books. I just think I need to work on other YA/potential crossover books with my very own brand of weirdness, so I can carve out my niche in book world.

Since I can't create more MEs, I guess I'd better work faster. :)


~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Need a Brain Boost?

Antioxidants are great brain food, which can help give you a boost when you’re feeling droopy and unfocused. Seriously, who can write with a case of the frazzles? Fruits and veggies that are rich in color like grapes, plums, red cabbage, pomegranates, berries, apples, citrus fruits, acai, broccoli, eggplant, kale, guava, tomatoes and sweet potatoes are known to have antioxidants, which benefit you in so many ways, including stabilizing free radicals and making your heart healthier.

Since pomegranates and blueberries are the perfect Jedi knights to bring balance to the force, what better way to get your fill than by combining all that healthy awesomeness in a delicious smoothie?

You can use any berries, but I prefer blueberries. And using frozen berries gives the smoothie a nice frothy texture. If you don’t have frozen fruit, add a few ice cubes to the mix.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 4 oz. Lite or regular blueberry yogurt


• 4 oz. Pomegranate juice (real juice not a cheap coctail blend)


• 1/2 medium banana. (I like it golden yellow and freckly, especially in a smoothie. If it’s got a hint of green, the smoothie can taste too waxy.)


• 3/4 cup frozen blueberries


• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract


• Honey to taste, about 1-2 tbsps

Combine ingredients in a blender or smoothie mixer, blend on medium until you reach desired consistency. Pour into a tall glass, and there you go. It's the perfect treat for NaNo too. Enjoy!

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Are You in Query Letter Hell?

Every writer who wants to be repped by an agent and published needs to master the art of query writing, getting that monster plot down to a suitable mini-synopsis that reflects both character and voice.

It sure is a pain in the booty to get that query letter right. I worked so hard to get my novel down to a few sentences, but those sentences reflected plot alone, not character and certainly not voice. So I went back to the drawing board and gave my letter a bit more personality.

There's so much conflicting advice all over the web about what a query should and should not have. And so many well-meaning writers actually make the query writing process more difficult for other writers on the brink of shopping.

Well, here it is, query letter writing, stripped down to the most important elements by Literary Agent, Jennifer Jackson. Check it out.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Guest Post: Tirzah Goodwin

Back That UP!!!

Please welcome my guest Tirzah Goodwin.

Ah, you write the last sentence of the final paragraph of your 200,000-word epic American Novel and you hit save. You’re exhausted, you’re elated. You’re just a little bit smug. I’m sure you’ve hit Twitter to brag to all your writing frenemies out there in the web world.

Then, the next morning you push your computer’s little ‘Go’ button and the screen remains mysteriously black. Mmm, that doesn’t look good. You check all the cords and it’s plugged in. You hit the button again, several times. Because repeatedly hitting it always works…lol. Still, just a black screen.

Now, your heart is pounding, little droplets of sweat start to stream down the crack of your ass (the sign of real desperation).

You call all your friends, a couple of enemies, and even your sister’s idiot husband who thinks he’s good with computers. Nothing works.

Nearly hysterical by this point, you get in the car in pajamas and flip-flops and drive to the nearest computer fix-it shop. You hold your broken laptop out to the 12-year old with the name tag and blubber, “ahbubhabib broken, boghsdiguy novel”, which he understands as ‘My computer is broken, please retrieve my novel.’

Only three hundred dollars later you know your laptop is dead forever. The boney kid swilling AMP at nine in the morning manages to save a couple of files. You have the draft of six chapters, about twenty-thousand words.

You literally lie down on the sidewalk and wait to die. God is not merciful.

Eventually, the police make you get up. Authority figures rarely understand the pain of losing your writing. And it’s best to go the heck home to start all over on your novel or to throw yourself on the bed and scream. Whatever works for you.

If you’re in an apartment, I suggest you scream with your head buried in your hypo-allergenic pillow. Neighbors don’t understand creative pain either.

Next, you’ll twitter all your friends about your bad luck. Several of them have the nerve to snicker a bit at your expense.

Don’t let this be you!

How can you avoid the humiliation?

First, back up your writing in multiple places. At the very least, set up a free yahoo or g-mail account and email each chapter to yourself. This way it’s waiting in a third party email account that you can access from anywhere.

Second, put it on a flash drive. Then put your flash drive where children can’t flush it down the toilet. Don’t trust the dog around it either. My male dog did something unspeakable to my flash drive that I can’t even repeat here for fear the porn police will arrest me.

Third, put it on an old-fashion disc. There’s a reason we used those things all these years.

Fourth, sign up for a third party writing site that allows you to load your writing but not display it. I use a couple of these sites to ‘store’ my writing for emergencies.

And the last thing to remember is not to dwell on what’s lost. It’s gone. Have a good cry, a beer, or kick a stuffed teddybear but get over it. Either re-write it or write something new.

And back your writing up!

But if you forget and erase something, remember to tell everyone how great it was. After all, they can’t prove otherwise, now can they?

Good Writing!

~ Tirzah