Graduation

Tonight my son graduated from the 9^th grade. He received high honors; and along with his best friend, won a class award for their work. He was more interested in the $20 gift included in the award. We celebrated with vanilla ice cream and white cake with sprinkles. He is now waiting for his new iPod to charge, while watching Sneakers. Everyone else is in bed, and we are the only two still awake.

He does not have to attend school tomorrow, but his siblings still do, and they think this is not fair. The iPod works, but now he needs music and books to put on it.

My youngest son received a medal for being punctual as an office monitor. This left my daughter without an award, certificate, degree, or any letter of commendation. The injustice in the world. She did make the cake, and it tasted fine, though she spent more time eating the frosting, because she liked the sprinkles in it.

A Good Soaking

Following work, my wife and I walk on the trail for exercise. On this particular Wednesday, the sky was overcast with dark gray clouds, and rain could be expected. As we walked, we kept hearing thunder. Normally, I would say it was thunder if I was in the Midwest, but Prince Edward Island rarely gets thunder. Also, trucks were traveling on the county road we were walking toward, and I could hear their warning beeps, and also hear the diesel of a D9 Caterpiller. My wife proposed thunder, and I being on top of things, suggested dump trucks and construction equipment.

But the rumbling of trucks grew constant and wide spread. We couldn't be surrounded by trucks, and then a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder settled the issue. Before us it grew dark gray to an already gray day. "It will probably downpour, as soon as we get to the car," I said. "It will probably pour when we get to the open space before the car," said my wife.

I was wrong for the second time. It was thunder I heard and not trucks, it rained before we got to the car, but I'm satisfied that my wife was wrong in her estimate, as well. Not more than a minute after our comments, the rain poured down upon us. We were still a half mile or so from the car. We braced ourselves (I chose this description because it makes us sound like we're on an adventure) and slogged through the driving rain. In that moment, I was trudging along with Bilbo Baggins and Frodo; I was experiencing weather like the couple from That Hideous Strength, and I was happy. Most adventures today cost, whether it is Disney World, Great America, or dare I say here on Prince Edward Island, Shining Waters; but a good soaking was absolutely free.

Lost Words

Sunday night turned into a rather distressing night due to lost words. It is one thing to lose your words when someone is berating you, and you need a good comeback, only to have nothing with which to retort, or zing them with, but they usually do come later, long after the encounter. In this way, then, they are not lost. They do come, but are no longer needed, and are soon forgotten. I've lost words, but they were not in response to someone berating me. They were three thousand words for my book.

To lose these words is nerve racking because it takes at least three to five hours of writing to gain them back. They are still near like a fox which you see but aloof by being far away, and maybe they are not exactly as they first came out onto the page, but they are part of the 110,291 other words that I have already written. They have meaning, if for anything else, in allowing this book to be done.

Prior to this blog, it looked as though 7,200 words were lost, and that would truly be nerve racking. It isn't the first time this is happened. Before, about a month ago, I lost twenty pages: all those words gone, and a week's worth of work lost. It hurt more then than now because I have been backing up. But 3,000 lost words are still more than I want to lose. Disaster was averted by a system restore. I gained once again the 4,000 that looked as though they were gone forever. Now they are back and in duplicate.

Part of this damage is not because wrong commands are given during the saving process, but the aging of a hard drive, at least six years. For the moment, my computer continues to do a fine job. In the distant future, there may be an Apple. I'm still doing my research. I am curious to know what word processing program Stephen King or Tom Clancy might use. And how many words have different authors lost in their writing career. It is one thing to 'kill your darlings' as King said in his book, On Writing, but a totally different thing to lose them not by choice. At the moment, WordPerfect 8 is my processor. I do like it over Microsoft Word (if anything for its ease at page numbering).

The book has challenged WordPerfect's abilities. I'm creating subdocuments, three chapters per file, and including them in the master document. Losing three chapters (about 7,000) is not as bad as the four or five chapters I lost earlier. It is all a learning experience. It would be nice to not lose the words until I kill them myself.

Early Morning Hours

Three hundred and eighty-six pages: this is the total so far for the book I'm writing. About the two hundred and fifty page mark, I printed them, knowing the sight of a thick paper stack would inspire; a quick trip to Staples, and the pages have a new home in a three ring binder, at least 3" thick: it holds five hundred pages. It is nice to see the pages pile up. Now is the book any good? Sure! It's the next classic novel, the American dream come tree. That's cogs wallop. There are so many errors in it, and much editing must be done before it is exactly presentable for another human being to read. My deadline fast approaches and this spurs me onward.

What are my real expectations? The first novel is the sacrificial lamb, so to speak. It enables the individual to prove to themselves they can do it, that they have the ability to write a novel, and finish it. I'm removing my demons: my book idea that has been floating around in my head for so long, and now I'm excising it from my memory like leaving luggage behind at a railroad station. It will be in book form, and I can move on in my life to other things. But this does not answer the question. I really expect the first novel to be the learning curve that will spawn dozens of other novels. I'm learning how to write and discovering the methods needed to make the second novel even better. Yes, I will send it to a publisher, and yes, I will wait to hear from them. It is one little book in such a big book ocean. The fun, or at least I have made it a game, will be collecting rejection letters. There is now a notebook I keep for these letters. They are fun to look at and see how different companies use different types of paper, or what notes they put on the letter, or even how big or little the letter may look. The whole process is fun.

Probably the hardest wait is taking my pages home to put into the notebook. It is a massive thing with my book title in the slide pocket. It is my creation. I just hope it is worthy of the master copy.