The Trouble With Demons -- Almost there!
I'm about six pages away from being finished with The Trouble With Demons. My deadline is this Friday. I busted my butt this weekend (I wrote about 10 pages on Saturday, and 8 pages yesterday). Friday night was almost a DEFCON 5 emergency. I'd gotten a really intense scene written and was very proud of it, and did what I do every minute or so -- I clicked on Save. Well, the computer thought about it for longer than normal and then saved it not as the same old Word document I've been working with, but saved it as a .tmp file. What the *$#*?! Then it wouldn't let me open it. Or let me save it as another file name. Or as another file type. And then the freakin' computer locked up. I've got adrenaline going by this point. I told myself I wasn't going to panic. I'd wait another 60 seconds, THEN I'd panic. I called Derek upstairs. I had a flashback to Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 as I tried to be calm when I yelled, "Derek, I have a problem!"
Derek didn't know what was wrong, so I calmly thanked him for trying to help, sat back down and stared at the offending machine, whom I'm starting to think of as the evil HAL 2000 by this point. It's Derek's laptop, not mine. I dropped my laptop case (with the computer inside) while packing for the RT Convention and it died a slow and painful death. My new Dell will be arriving by Friday, but in the meantime, Derek gave me his computer -- is he the best husband, or what? Anyhow, I started fiddling with it again, and somehow convinced HAL to cough up my final chapter. I saved it as quickly as my fingers would type, and then backed it up on my flash drive. Disaster averted.
Part of the reason why I was so freaked out was not only losing all of that work, but one of my main characters had done something they weren't supposed to do for at least another book. When a character snatches the reins out of my hands like that, I know I'm on to something good and go with it -- even if it wasn't in my plans at all. Plans change, and this time it was something much better. ; )
Contest with Prizes! -- Scroll down to Saturday's blog (for prize pics), and to Friday's blog (for all of the details). The condensed version is that I'm having a contest to try to get Amazon reviews for Armed & Magical. People pay more attention to (and ultimately buy) books that have a lot of reviews (they're perceived as being more popular). Go figure. Since review writing can be time-consuming, I'm making it worth your while with a contest and prizes. Just post a review over the next two weeks, send me an email telling me you've posted a review, and you're in the drawing for the prizes. Three names will be drawn at random on Saturday, May 24. It's easy, and you can win cool, free stuff. ; )
Coming up tomorrow: More on finishing TTWD.
Lisa
Derek didn't know what was wrong, so I calmly thanked him for trying to help, sat back down and stared at the offending machine, whom I'm starting to think of as the evil HAL 2000 by this point. It's Derek's laptop, not mine. I dropped my laptop case (with the computer inside) while packing for the RT Convention and it died a slow and painful death. My new Dell will be arriving by Friday, but in the meantime, Derek gave me his computer -- is he the best husband, or what? Anyhow, I started fiddling with it again, and somehow convinced HAL to cough up my final chapter. I saved it as quickly as my fingers would type, and then backed it up on my flash drive. Disaster averted.
Part of the reason why I was so freaked out was not only losing all of that work, but one of my main characters had done something they weren't supposed to do for at least another book. When a character snatches the reins out of my hands like that, I know I'm on to something good and go with it -- even if it wasn't in my plans at all. Plans change, and this time it was something much better. ; )
Contest with Prizes! -- Scroll down to Saturday's blog (for prize pics), and to Friday's blog (for all of the details). The condensed version is that I'm having a contest to try to get Amazon reviews for Armed & Magical. People pay more attention to (and ultimately buy) books that have a lot of reviews (they're perceived as being more popular). Go figure. Since review writing can be time-consuming, I'm making it worth your while with a contest and prizes. Just post a review over the next two weeks, send me an email telling me you've posted a review, and you're in the drawing for the prizes. Three names will be drawn at random on Saturday, May 24. It's easy, and you can win cool, free stuff. ; )
Coming up tomorrow: More on finishing TTWD.
Lisa
posted by Lisa Shearin at
8:19 AM
2 Comments:
Unfortunately, that temp file also serves as a lock file. Once a temp file exists, it locks the master file so you cannot open it twice.
After a while, that temp file phones home to the master file. If it cannot find it, it realizes that you already closed the master file, leaving the temp file homeless. Then, it destroys itself, allowing you to go back into the master file.
Somehow, your temp file and master file got out of sync. However, once that temp file timed out, you were able to get into the master file.
And that was probably more than you ever wanted to know about how Word's save feature works. Good luck with those last six pages!
Mucho thanks, Tia! That's exactly what happened. ; )
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