This post is about personal venting and inner angst. Pet Peeve 1001.
I deserve the right to have a well-deserved, pent-up, conniption fit. NOTHING— and I mean NOTHING—enrages me more than to work days and hours on a writing piece—then click PUBLISH and I lose the dang piece!!!!
In that moment, I seething as I stare at the blank screen thinking about the time invested in editing, writing, re-writing, condensing, finding the right word, using examples and illustrations and…….
Whoosh! My Pulitzer Prize Masterpiece is floating out in cyberspace.
“What the #XO@!!!!!.” I scream like a wild banshee. There has to be some comfort in the retrieval process. Painstakingly, I have to backtrack—if that even possible.
Wait! Didn’t I go through the process of Control C (Copy) and Control V (Paste)
Check.
I remember awhile back I selected AUTO SAVE which AUTOMATICALLY supposedly saves my work every five minutes–or so.
It’s checked, but obviously, this feature must not have kicked in.
Step Two: Check possible folders and especially Desktop. A friend, who’s an IT expert, says “Try Clipboard.”
NOTHING.
I’ve screamed; I’ve vented; I’ve cursed, and cried. Good!
This might hard to explain to non-writers, but here goes. When I get an idea, I feel compelled to write about it. Most times, the idea is still forming before I get to the computer. The excitement is to get the computer when the idea is fresh. There’s a thousand ideas percolating and most times, I cannot type fast enough. Inwardly, there’s an unexplainable joy of taking a minuscule idea from inception to fruition. One idea hooks onto the next, and before I know it, the piece is writing itself. While it may sound passé, but writing is a calling. As a writer, I don’t mind the rewrites or editing. But replicating a piece? It doesn’t feel natural.
I thought about author J.K. Rowling, who created the wildly popular Harry Potter Books. I read Rowland was a single mother on welfare, who composed most of her work on napkins in a coffee shop. It made me think about her love for the craft and being crafty enough to write by any means necessary. She didn’t have the option of using a computer, using the many features to Save, Copy, and Paste. Her experience made me really assess myself and my writing situation.
I catch myself: “LaLinda, you have other options!”
Now, where’s that computer option to RELAX, REWIND, REJUVENATE, and RELEASE?
lalindaknows 