Shortly after my last blog post last Wednesday, the hard drive on my laptop began showing signs of distress. I ran Disk Utility on it and found that it was in the early stages of failing. The utility told me to get the hard drive replaced. I made sure that my backups were up to date and then took it in to the Apple store.
The Apple folks were great. They made their own backup of the entire machine, replaced the hard drive, and restored all my data. No charge, because the machine is still under warranty. I got my machine back late on Friday, and am thankful that everything is back to normal.
If you don’t have a good system of backups, the best time to do so is before things start going kablooey. You can buy a huge external hard drive for under $100. Apple’s Time Machine software (on either Leopard or Snow Leopard) is fast and brain-dead easy to use. I’m not a Windows guy, but undoubtedly Windows has excellent backup faciilities built-in (I don’t know the name of the Windows tool, or I’d name it here). Use these tools. Don’t leave your data at risk.
I missed a couple of days of blogging because my normal blog time was spent driving. Today is my day to write my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, so I’ll be back to normal blogging mode tomorrow.
In the meantime, I thought I’d point you to a new blog I just discovered: Slushpile Hell. This is the work of an anonymous “grumpy literary agent” who regularly posts quotations from query letters he or she receives from clueless writers, along with a snide comment from the agent. This blog is short — sometimes fewer than 30 words — and it’s hilarious. If you read it every day, you’ll learn hundreds of stupid things NOT to say to an agent. And that can be gold.
The other blog I’ll point you to is freelance editor Meredith Efken’s blog at Fiction Fixit Shop. I have a serious backlog of questions asked by my Loyal Blog Readers. My commitment is to answer all questions in the order they come in, but I’m now about 10 weeks behind. So I asked Meredith to help out.
Today, Meredith tackles the gnarly question of how much a novelist can expect to earn. The answer to this question is so long that she’s breaking it into two parts.
I’m Xtremely pleased with the terrific job Meredith is doing in answering questions. She explains things thoroughly and well. (That’s why I pay her to review my own fiction before I send it to my editor or agent.)
Thanks for the blog links. I’ve read one of Meredith’s posts and it was great. Can’t wait to read her latest and check out SlushPile Hell which sounds very entertaining. Thanks! 🙂
Oh my gosh, SlushPile Hell is amazing. I’ll check out Meredith’s blog once I stop laughing.
You hear all the time of what people will say to get an agent to read them, but to read some of them just makes it all more rewarding from people who study the craft so we can learn from their mistakes.
Tim
You caught a very lucky break with your hard drive. I got back from a weeks glorious vacation and – without any warning at all – my MacBook crashed and burned and the vast majority of the data was unrecoverable, even after the IT team at the office had tried.
Luckily, I’m pretty good at keeping backups but I still lost around 8,000 words of the WIP and I also lost a bunch of new contacts and other stuff from a couple of recent networking events.
You know the moral of the story people….
Randy sez: Yes, my own backup strategy wasn’t as complete as it should have been. One of the first things I did after getting my MacBook back was to run TimeMachine and start those pesky hourly backups going. And I’m looking into CrashPlan.com, which was MacWorld’s top pick for online backups.
Who would have thought hell could be so funny?
Meredith continues to be good value, but Slushpile Hell is a find in a million. I don’t think I’ve laughed out loud that much in a long time. I’m now going to begin each day with a good laugh. So glad you found that one and recommended it Randy, thanks.
🙂 Karen
Thanks, everyone, for checking out my blog–it’s really fun to help Randy answer your questions. You’re asking some really great ones!
And I’m going to go check out Slushpile Hell. Sounds fun!