So, my no-good, very bad day: I’ve been hip-deep in the new book and I’m in the dreaded middle third, where things do not come easily and I routinely tell my husband that the new book stinks, my writing stinks, *I* stink . . . not a pretty picture.\u00a0 I think it was Raymond Chandler who said that you know when things aren’t going well if you have to pull the words out.<\/p>\n
So my day was like that.\u00a0 I blame some–most–of it on breaking off to do two other projects.\u00a0 My choice, I got to live with the fall-out: in this case, needing to find the book’s voice again.\u00a0 I think I finally got into it somewhere around 11:00 a.m., wrote my number of pages and then a little more, and then–stupidly–decided to do something ELSE not writing-related without saving the pages I’d done.<\/p>\n
You know where this is going.<\/p>\n
So the computer pretty much froze up trying to download drivers for my printer.\u00a0 No blue screen of death, but I sort of thought that’d be next.\u00a0 I made the STOOPID decision to unplug the computer when the thing hung and hung and hung, figuring . . .\u00a0 autorecover, no biggie.<\/p>\n
Uh . . . no . . .<\/p>\n
So, all my work for the day . . . just gone.\u00a0 Scattered electrons.\u00a0 Poof.<\/p>\n
I had a mini-meltdown.\u00a0 I cursed a lot.\u00a0 I tried a recovery program, but no dice.\u00a0 Then I went for a bike ride.\u00a0 I’d planned to go with my daughter to see “Julie & Julia,” but I was in SUCH a foul humor.\u00a0 Then I felt guilty, thought how I should do what I said I would.\u00a0 So we went.<\/p>\n
Boy, am I glad we did.\u00a0 First of all, the movie was wonderful, just what I needed.\u00a0 I laughed and got teary and was pleased as punch that I remembered enough French to follow the conversations (there isn’t much).\u00a0 Most of all, I really understood what Julie Powell (and, maybe, Julia Child) was\/were getting at: cooking is something you do for love–love of cooking, yes, but also love of family.<\/p>\n