#writerrecharge

Well, the month of February has come and gone, and I am truly thankful for the effort of #writerrecharge and all of its participants. You guys rock, and you have kept me motivated all month long. I hope you all accomplished everything you had set out to do. Prepare for a LONG post to come below. It is my explanation for my week.

I said that I wanted to accomplish 1250 words this past week and to work on my book blurb. Well, it’s funny. Things happen and plans change. Let me explain.

My husband is such a great man. He got a bug to try and get into two old computers. One was a Win98 laptop that I have not had the password to in probably seven or more years. The other was a Dell laptop–that had a broken off power supply. I think I lost using it back in 2010. I had taken it to technicians to try to get it fixed and was told it was unfixable.

You have to realize that I was devastated about losing that computer. ALL of my most current work was on that machine as well as all my contracts and so on from published books since 2008. I hadn’t backed up, of course (what writer does? we write too much too often!)–but I was resigned. I told myself, it was okay. I could write more. I could write better. I wouldn’t EVER need those stupid stories anyway.

In other words, I lied to myself and made me believe it.

So when my hubby set out to do these great and terrible things, I could only cringe and nod and say okay, but you’ve been warned. If he succeeded, great – I would be happy. If not, well, nothing lost. I was without the data before he began this journey.

Well, the 98 machine was the easiest to tackle so he tried it first. I stood over his shoulder in our kitchen and watched as the old laptop came to life (insert music here by Evanescence http://youtu.be/3YxaaGgTQYM )

When the password screen appeared, he looked at me. “This is all you, babe.”
I stared. Something clicked. Could it be that the password had finally come to my mind again after all these years? I said, “Try master.”

He typed the word master, and the computer came up. I saw the folder on the desktop that said, “Kim’s writing stuff” and burst into tears. Things on that laptop had been kept from me since 2003. Only God alone could make me remember that password. My loving spouse held me while I really, truly wailed. I didn’t expect to react so strongly. I was so happy. I told him even if he never got into the other laptop, I would be thrilled to have this work alone.

I spent all of Monday night copying over the data from that old machine to the Internet and emailing all my lost work to myself. It took a long time because the computer was not Internet worthy. But I did it! But I also didn’t get any writing done.

On Tuesday afternoon while I was at my job, my hubby sent me a text. It was a picture of my desktop (in safe mode) on the Dell laptop. Again, he had somehow against all odds, managed to get into a computer that was believed to be unusable. I controlled my emotions. The screen was in safe mode. Something was not going to work. It was going to be a bomb. I couldn’t get excited. Not emotional at all. I was at work, for heaven’s sake.

I raced home. I must have broken all speed laws to get there. When I walked in he explained that the patient was only holding on by a mere thread. “Do NOT move it or touch it,” he told me. He’d managed to hook up an external mouse and keyboard for me to use. I sat in front of it and found all of my work there — utterly unaffected. Stories, articles, books, EVERYTHING I’ve ever needed for years.

I bawled. I screamed. I danced. And then I began the painstaking job of sending it all to myself via email once again. It was easier to do, this was a newer machine with Windows Vista on it. But there was SO MUCH of it that it still took a long time. So, no writing for me Tuesday night either.

Wednesday night, I wrote 887 words on my contemporary romance because I felt in a love mood. Then Thursday night I spent time with a writing buddy and had dinner. No writing. Then Friday night, I snuggled with my hubby who is super great *(did I tell you that?)* and watched the news and when he went to bed, (he works nights) fell asleep on the couch. No writing for me.

So this morning, I said, I am going to write on the apocalypse story, and I did. I sat down and when I got finished there were 664 shiny news words done. So I managed to do my word count but not before March 1st. I think you will agree that it was worth it. I surely do! Besides, I probably made up for the last four hundred or so words with blog posts. I try to do that each day.

So anyway, here is an excerpt from one of the works that has been restored to me. Thanks again everyone who has been a part of this #writerrecharge month. I really want to do more of this soon. This excerpt is from a historical romance I penned sometime between 2003 and 2010. Only about 4 pages is written, but I remember the plot.

David Kracht / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Alannah Burke, chapter one.

intimidated by the dark and lovely older Nancy.