The Bad, the Worse and the Frustrating

Things have been a bit crazy, stressful and frustrating for me for a while, now, both at work and at home.  I’ve been feeling that I have had too much to do at both.  That’s the bad.

I wrote about how my computer died a couple of months ago from, quite frankly, being too old.  It took some work, but Kristine was able to recover most of my files from the hard drive.  All the important stuff – my scripts and my novels.

Last week, the recovery drive I’ve been working from also stopped working and I lost all my recent modifications to my novels.  It had taken me a long time to get to the point where I could hire an editor for my first Steampunk novel, and now that I am ready, my novel isn’t. 

I was 31 pages away from completing my final read-through when the drive went from working to dead – all in the space of one day.  That’s the worse.

All is not lost, though.  I have an earlier version backed up, but it’s 5,000 words shorter than my final version.  That is how much I’ll have to reconstruct.  I’ve been able to start the reconstruction from the backup and chapters I emailed to my two critique groups.  So far, I’m up to chapter 6 out of 16, and I’ve recovered about 500 words, but it’s taking a lot of time.  I also have to look back at the notes sent to me by my critique groups to remember what changes I made after I sent out those chapters.  

My progress on the second steampunk novel has also been slower than I’d like.  I had anemia last fall, which made me too tired after work to do much of anything, then all these computer problems happened, and work still wears me out.  That’s the frustrating part.

The feedback I get from my critique groups is of great value.  They catch issues (and spelling errors) I don’t see.  And I also learn just as much about writing by critiquing other writer’s work.  But for now, I feel I have to take a break from my groups up in order to reach my goal of reconstructing my first book, getting it to my editor, then to the agent waiting to see it and completing my second book by the end of the year.  

It was a tough decision that I thought about for a while, but it is something I have to do to reach my goals.  I’ve redone my progress stats below to reflect the rework I have to do.

Wish me luck,

Dennis

331^th blog completed.

First Steampunk novel:  72,805 words.  Under reconstruction.

Second Steampunk novel: 18,234 words.  Will need to be reconstructed.

First Steampunk screenplay:  Will need to be retrieved from backup and updated.

Second Steampunk screenplay:  158 pages.  Will need to be retrieved from backup and updated.  

Third Steampunk screenplay:  38 pages.  Will need to be reconstructed.

“This week’s experiment was Cowboy Spaghetti  https://www.facebook.com/tasteofhome/posts/pfbid0Sq5ProVCdUSh4XmhJQ7HXD2kR34EkNiaDKC1pF4XjAgqYyumXJ81rnMrrCrwn76Tl

This, like the Cowboy Mac and Cheese, was a hearty meal.  And is Kris approved.

It also makes a lot as you can see from the filled-to-the-brim skillet.  We all had some and this is how much was left.  

There have been a lot of “Cowboy” recipes out on Facebook recently and Dennis wants to try all of them.  So far, I’m not complaining.”  – Vincent Reinheart.