Carol M. Salter
  • MY NEWS
  • MY BLOG - From Inspiration to Reality
  • MY WORK
    • WITCH ON THE WARPATH
    • GRISTLE'S REVENGE
    • QUEST FOR COURAGE
    • AQUASAPIEN - METAMORPHOSIS 18+
    • AQUASAPIEN PRODIGY
    • WHAT IF?
    • CHICKEN WIZARD
    • SHEA PINGLE AND THE SWARM
    • MY PAST CONFERENCES & EVENTS
    • FUTURE CONFERENCES & EVENTS
  • MY STORE
  • FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
  • CONTACT ME


​FROM   INSPIRATION  TO   REALITY
​MY  PUBLISHING   DIARY

30 minutes of jaw-dropping terror

3/8/2018

0 Comments

 
As you may, or may not, know from time to time I do NanoWrimo. I'm not really sure why, because it's a sure way to achieve a gastric ulcer. In 2017, I got a lot of good feedback about Aqua 1 and, flattered by the attention, I thought I'd bring Aqua 2 along a bit by doing Nano again. I'd already sprinted about 2,000 words and though I had a lot on that month what with the Soroptimist National Conference in Cardiff and the Sci-Fi Conference I was booked for in Nottingham I decided I could manage to "have a go."

​I started and duly finished the expected word count. You can probably read my account in my blogs for Nov 2017. As the first novel was 127,000 words. I wanted the second to be about the same so the 52,000 words I'd written wasn't up to much and in fact the story was only just getting to the juicy part (excluding the sex which began at the second chapter!) I turned my mind and attention back to the follow-up novel for WOTW deciding I could add the 30,000 words I needed there more easily. Off I zoomed on a high, forgetting all about Aqua 2, until yesterday when my son kindly added Grammarly to my apps.

"I know," he says, "pick something to grammar check to test it's working." Aqua 2 just the thing, I thought. Only it wasn't there.

It wasn't in my computer when I opened it, well 13 pages of it were, but nothing after that. Freaked out or what? I'm sitting in horror, the type of horror you feel when someone runs off with your child and you'll never, ever see them again. When you write a book, it becomes your baby for a while until it's completed, then you have to let it grow up (proof editing) and leave home (publishing).

​If ever there was a state of mind for gob-smacked, I was in it. I couldn't take in the fact it wasn't there. I couldn't cope with that single thought. I was frozen in terror. In my mind lines from the book kept jumping out at me. I'm never going to remember and write those 52,000 words from memory I wailed close to losing it. I was minutes away from a complete and utter meltdown. The tears ran silently down my face, I couldn't go there, couldn't voice what had happened it was unbelievable.

​It wasn't in my back up drive, I hadn't saved it in my email draft, which I often do. It wasn't on the Nano site any more. It was gone and I knew in my soul that I couldn't bring myself to write it again. Aqua 1 would remain a stand-alone novel  - forever.

​My husband and son worked on my machine and somehow they found it lurking in the very depths of my laptop. Where it had gone we didn't know, but they teased it back and it re-surfaced like a whale breaking for air. My heart felt weak. If I was going to have a heart attack it would have been then.

​So Aqua 2 is found, but I can't bring  myself to face it just yet. I need some time until I want to open the file again. It scared me too much to forgive it.
​

0 Comments

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    View my profile on LinkedIn
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • MY NEWS
  • MY BLOG - From Inspiration to Reality
  • MY WORK
    • WITCH ON THE WARPATH
    • GRISTLE'S REVENGE
    • QUEST FOR COURAGE
    • AQUASAPIEN - METAMORPHOSIS 18+
    • AQUASAPIEN PRODIGY
    • WHAT IF?
    • CHICKEN WIZARD
    • SHEA PINGLE AND THE SWARM
    • MY PAST CONFERENCES & EVENTS
    • FUTURE CONFERENCES & EVENTS
  • MY STORE
  • FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
  • CONTACT ME