On Monday, mid working day, I suddenly got locked out of my laptop. I put in my regular password and it rejected it, over and over. Many hours of deep panic, running over to an IT whizz neighbour’s house, a trip to the Apple store, calls to Apple support, numerous melting emoji sent to friends, a few tears and a number of skipped heartbeats ensued. Then at the end of it all, there was nothing else for it, the whole thing was encrypted (I have no idea how) and it had to be wiped!
Restore factory settings. Clear your computer of everything on it!
My mind raced to an alert that had come up on my screen a few days earlier, telling me that I hadn’t backed up my computer for 36 days. I had meant to back it up then and there, but something else had caught my attention.
So, as I sat on the bus coming home from the unsuccessful Apple store trip, I tried to remember what day I finished my novel. Was that longer than 36 days ago?
As we bumped along the traffic heavy streets, banda music pumping from the speakers, sun and dust streaming through the slightly opened windows, I imagined the worse-case scenario, that somehow my back up wouldn’t work and I’d lose my novel or at least much of the recent edit. I remembered tales of Hemingway losing his stories and the beginning of a novel (and never getting over it, or in fact, apparently never forgiving his wife, who was the one who was traveling with the stories in the suitcase that was stolen). I recalled the writer, whose name I don’t remember, who deletes her first drafts and starts all over again from scratch, trusting that the important bits will land again in the second draft. I pondered, what would Ram Dass say? I imagined he would talk about detachment, that he might laugh jovially at our desire to be defined by, and to be able to control, anything external to us.
In the end, somewhere between the Apple store and my stop, I found some peace. I didn’t want to have to rewrite my novel (I desperately didn’t) but if I had to, I would, because it was worth it. And something about knowing that felt good. The commitment to ON SOLID GROUND (that’s the title by the way, I don’t know if I have shared that before) felt important and solid, like the book’s name.
Happily, dear readers, after an anxious night, the restore was successful and having resigned myself to the fact that I would not have the most up to date version of the novel, it turned out it was there, sitting calmly, unassumingly in my iCloud. The relief (and gratitude to my past self and the Universe) was immense. I would have done it, I would have rewritten it but I am glad that the new novel, that is pulling at me with some urgency, will get my attention instead.
So, back up, back up, back up your writing…but you know that already! More importantly, BACK your writing with all your heart. 💜
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Reigniting Your Creative Fire- Online Offering 🔥
Thank you for all the excitement and interest in this offering! What a joy to hear about where you are all at with your creative fires right now.
I have the date and time defined (I tried to pick a time to accommodate as many times zones as possible):
✨Sunday April 16 - 12pm PT/ 1pm Mex City/ 3pm ET/ 8pm UK/ 6am AEDT ✨
This will be a FREE online gathering with visualisation, writing prompts and creative fun to reignite or add extra kindling to our creative fires. 🔥
If you are interested, please save the date and send me your email address, or say yes in the comments (and I will use the email address you subscribed with). I will send out the link and more details via email soon.
Mentoring
I have one space left for a month-long (4-session) mentoring package in April. Is it yours? If you’d like to harness the fiery energies of this month to start a new project, move forward with one that has maybe got a little stuck, or to finally share your work with the world, I would love to hear from you.
Here’s what one of my wonderful clients had to say:
Whew!! There was a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as I read this. 😅 So happy your work was recovered!!
Also, the idea of deleting the first draft and rewriting, on purpose!! I respect it, while relating not at all. Lol
Yes please for the Reigniting Your Creative Fire gathering! Thank you so much for creating it.