Always at the wrong time.

Why does your computer always protest either at the end of a novel, or when it’s finished being edited for publication? Not to be confused with small stuff such as: It didn’t load up right so I had to reboot. Or it jammed up while on the Internet, so I had to reboot. I’m talking about crash and burn when you lose everything. Or when a gremlin somehow gets in and wipes out your manuscript?

After finishing the final edit on The Fifth Deadly Sin, I was ready to submit it electronically to my editor and the system wiped out. Couldn’t even turn it on; no way to retrieve my file. I finally hired a tech and it cost me $400. Why did I go to that trouble, you ask? Because from the very first completed manuscript to the final edit, I had moved so many chapters around, I couldn’t remember how. I hadn’t taken notes. I hadn’t backed it up yet. And wouldn’t you know this was one of the first times I hadn’t backed anything up with my zip drive.

Then again, what’s the use? I know a writer who recently completed his manuscript, saved it to a floppy and suffered a crash. He was elated because at least he’d saved it. However, the floppy had somehow been corrupted. He lost everything. Now he’s starting over, searching for those lost thoughts that made the first version a winner.

What I can’t understand is: there are those of us who’ve upgraded our hard drives in the past, along with video cards, audio cards. We know how to put parts into our computers. They work fine after that. No glitches, no gremlins. Then, when you least expect it—crash and burn. The burn part is no joke. One night I woke up and smelled something burning. I checked out the house, the grounds around the house—nothing. When I went back into my bedroom, I realized it was my computer burning. By now there were flames seeping through the cracks. I had to disconnect everything and spray it with a fire extinguished. The power pack, or whatever it was inside, shorted out. All my wiring and chips, boards were melted together.

So just when you think all of your problems are solved—fire!! To me, this is because our computers are used beyond the norm. I used to kill electric typewriters, now it’s computers. Some day my old friend Bill Gates will come up with a model that’s ‘writer proof’ and all of our problems will be solved.

Yeah! Right! (Speaking in disgust).