Stay Calm and Be Optimistic

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.~Emo Philips

Ahh, computers. They drive us batty at times but we love them anyway. Many of us now carry a computer of sorts around in our hand or stuck in a pocket or attached to our belts. That phone that does it all from surfing the net to taking photos of ourselves. So many of them that a new word is in our vocabulary - selfies. 

And sometimes that computer breaks or starts acting squirrely and we have absoluting no idea of why. A new update? Driver problems? Operator trouble? That's probably the one the tech helpers groan about the most and the reason one of the software companies is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key." They get a the flood of calls asking where that "Any" key is.

Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business. Yes, and that is also true if you are a housewife, architect or engineer. ~Dale Carnegie

Trouble is, it's not only the tech support guy dealing with people. The poor schmucks with the computer problems have to deal with the tech guy too. Of course, after listening to a half hour of how much some recorder values your business and a human being might be with you very soon and then getting music that no one in their right mind would ever intentionally listen to piped directly into your ear, you're ready to talk to any person, even somebody named Bhuzti. It doesn't even matter if it's obvious from Bhuzti's first hello that he's talked to one too many idiots already before you hit the jackpot and got connected with him. You feel lucky for about one minute and then the tech guy insults you by asking if you have the computer plugged in. While we might not know a control panel from a game of solitaire, most all of us do know how to plug something in. After we assure Bhuzti that we have the device plugged in, things generally go downhill from there.   

I actually talked to Bhuzti a couple of weeks ago. I was trying to help my sister get her wireless router to work. She has tech phobia and so I stepped up to bat for her. Stayed on hold for at least those thirty minutes. Heard their plea over and over that if I'd just go on-line to their website all my problems would surely be solved quickly and easily. But I'd chased down that trail without success before and was stubborn. I was determined to hold for that human they said might someday help me. 

I was about to give up when Bhuzti came on line and of course asked me that plug question followed up with the information that these routers were very easy to install and all you had to was plug them in. When I very politely told him I had done exactly what the instructions said and the router would not work, he suggested with some insistence that I should "stay calm and be optimistic." At that point he made me very nervous by wanting my phone number to call me back. In one minute he promised. I gave him the number and hung up, sure that would be the last I ever heard of Bhuzti. But he surprised me by called right back in that minute with of course, the instruction to "stay calm and be optimistic." 

By the time I unplugged and plugged in again and set and reset (after a frantic search for a paper clip that he said we'd need when a pen point would have worked just as well) and chasing all around the computer to this screen and that screen turning this and that off and on more than once, the router was still not working and I think Mr. Bhuzti was beginning to need to follow his own advice about being optimistic. 

To make a long story short - oh, sorry, I guess it's too late for that. Anyway, after another round of ons and offs, our optimism was rewarded and the router finally was working. I felt like reaching through the phone line all the way to India to give Bhuzti a hug - calmly of course. We'd succeeded. My sister could surf to her heart's content without being wired to her modem. But success was shortlived. When I saw her the next day, the router was no longer connecting to the internet. She didn't want me to come and use up her phone minutes talking to Bhuzti  or whichever lucky tech guy we got next. Instead she packed the thing up and took it back to the store. Calmly, but without any optimism at all. I'm sure it was the computer's fault.

To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so. ~Robert Orben

Still, Bhuzti's advice wasn't so bad. Stay calm and be optimistic. I think that will be my by-words this year. With Mom. With my work in progress. With my computer. 

How about you? Do you dread having to call the tech guys? Or how about the phone company? With them you have to choose this option or that option and the last time I tried to connect with them, one of the options just cut me off completely and I had to start over. I think they hope you'll get so discouraged you'll give up. But they don't know I've gotten Bhuzti's words to live by now. Stay calm and be optimistic!!

One Pencil = 45,000 Words

"A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere." ~Joyce A. Myers

With one pencil you can write 45,000 words - a short novel. Actually not quite half my own novels, but then I've been accused of being a bit wordy at times. 

I heard this interesting fact not long ago on the radio about how many words were in a pencil, and it started me thinking about all the pencils I have laying around. Pencils no doubt full of stories if I'd just pick them up and apply the lead to the paper. William Faulkner must have liked that style of writing if this quote from him is any indication. "I've got to feel the pencil and see the words at the end of the pencil."  You have to wonder if he would be saying I've got to feel the keys and see the words spilling across the computer screen these days. That's more the way I write. The way many writers write. Some still pick up pen and paper. Some dictate their words. 

Did you know that you can get computer programs that enable the computer to record your spoken words? Of course I can't even get my phone to understand when I want to call my husband, Darrell. The irritating little woman who lives in my phone comes back and says, "I can't find barrel." So it's no telling what a computer would type if I was dictating a story to it.

But I do think I need that feel of the keys and the words appearing on the screen in front of my eyes. Anybody want to hazard a guess to how many words are in a computer? That takes the pencil's 45,000 to a new level. However, computers have been known to have untimely deaths - usually right after the best scene you've ever written. The one you forgot to back up. Pencil leads break, but a little sharpening and they are right back to work without letting the paper lose a word. Unless the dog eats it or something. Or does that only happen with homework?

Even so, most of us began forming our letters with a pencil. Then the magic of words was at our fingertips. We could write down stories. I never tried to write a story with a pencil. I was partial to ink pens when I began writing, but it pokes at my imagination to think about being able to write a short novel with one pencil. It would have to be the right pencil. The one loaded down with imagination and nice soft lead to make the writing easy. I'd get my callus back on my middle finger like I used to have when I was in school. Then again maybe I'll stick with the keyboard. 

How about you? How do you like to write? Ever written a whole book with one pencil? You could you know, but I don't know if the eraser would last for me. "The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead." ~ Robert Brault

Thanks for reading.    

Computer Blues

~~When you have the computer blues sometimes you need to hunt a reason to smile.

• At least my pencil never crashes. -Author Unknown
• The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back. - Author Unknown
• Never let a computer know you're in a hurry. - Author Unknown
• User, n. The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot." - Dave Barry
• To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer. -Farmer's Almanac, 1978

~~You might be able to guess I'm having a few computer problems. I got somebody to work on it. It got worse. Before only a couple of things weren't working. Now four or five more things aren't working. Makes me a little leery about trying to fix it again. I don't know which is worse - the virus or the cure. At this rate I'll soon be using that pencil.

~~Pencils or perhaps quills dipped in ink used to be the instrument of choice for a writer. But it would be hard to go back to that time now. The same as it would be hard to go back to drawing all the illustrations for the newspapers the way they were doing in the mid 1800's. In mybook, The Seeker, due out in July, one of my characters is an illustrator for the newspapers and he follows the Union Army recording the battle scenes. Photography was in its infancy and Mathew Brady did take pictures during the Civil War. It took a wagonload of equipment and the subjects of the photos had to stand very still to have their images captured. My artist character was happy with his sketchbook and pens and pencils, but if he had lived in modern times he would have had to find a new occupation. We depend on photos now to show us the news.

~~Cameras have certainly progressed until now we have these digital cameras you can carry in your shirt pocket or that are part of your phone. You can point and shoot and then look at the picture right now and simply hit the trashcan symbol if you don't like your smile. The word processor is the same kind of advancement on the early typewriter, with similar delete options that can make you smile or lose your mind. According to whether you intended to delete or not or whether the crash of your operating system happened at an inopportune time. You know, just after you'd finally figured out the perfect words to put in your character's mouth. Perfect words that get eaten by a computer never find their way back into your head.

~~Guess I'll try to reboot the computer now and see what happens next. I've got all my words saved and maybe the dreaded blue screen won't attack. Hope all your computers are humming and singing and showing the right pictures when you click your mouse. Here's a final quote to encourage the writer in us all. "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." Thank goodness.

A Wirebound Notebook and a Pen

~~A wirebound notebook and an inkpen are looking better and better to me tonight. My computer has a headache and that's giving me a bigger headache and making me think fondly back to the good old days before electronics took over our lives. When I started writing back in the olden days, I loved filling up wirebound notebooks (some of the relics are in the picture above) using fountain pens filled out of an ink bottle of blue black ink. Alas, I no longer have any of those pens, so that why there's a ballpoint pen in the photo. What is it about writers that makes us obsess over just the right pen and color ink?

~~Could be the right pen and paper wakes up the Muse inside you. I loved getting a new notebook and thinking about all the words I was going to write on its pages. You could fill up that kind of notebook. And I did. The stories inside me had to spill out somewhere and the notebooks were enticingly blank and waiting. Those blank pages never gave me the shivers. Those blank pages were begging for the words tumbling out of my head. It didn't matter all that much what the words were. I was writing for the fun of it - just a rush of story sliding from my brain down my arm and out my fingers into the pen and onto the lined page. No rewriting. No worry about what anybody was going to think. Nobody ever read those stories but me. So there was just the magic of words forming a story.

~~The desire to be published didn't come until I got a little older. With that desire came the need to improve my writing, to polish the words and sentences, but more importantly to try to tell stories other people would want to read. A good story, that's what readers want and that's what I wanted to write then. That's what I still want to write today all these years and many stories later.

~~In the process of writing my stories, I've gone from the notebooks and pen to typewriters to word processors. The computers are nice. Typos are easy to correct. Words can flow across the blank screen with nearly effortless typing. When the computer works. But when it gets a headache and maybe even gets, heaven forbid, a virus, then a writer has problems. Problems I'm having as my computer threw a little fit Monday and has been sulking ever since. The spell check has disappeared. The thesaurus won't come up. It sticks its tongue out at me and says find your own word and didn't you learn to spell in school? Thank my teachers I did.

~~But what strikes the most fear in a writer's heart is that it might just go black and not fire up again. That's because this writer doesn't really want to go back to those notebooks and pens.
The ten-cent store where I used to buy bottles of that blue black ink is long gone, replaced by Wal-Mart stores. And no editor is going to read notebook writing. They want files they can get across the internet with a few clicks of a mouse. There's no going back to the simpler times when you could look at a typewriter and see it needed a new ribbon or had a broken key. Now you look at a screen that says stuff like "fatal error" or "we need to shut down now" or "we can't find a solution to this error" or "throw the thing out the window." Oh wait, maybe that last is something I feel like saying sometimes. But I won't throw it out the window. I'll keep trying to figure out ways to keep it humming so I can keep putting words on that blank screen to tell my stories.

~~Hope all your computers are humming and clicking and doing all the things good computers are supposed to do. Thanks for reading.

And then the phone goes crazy

Hi everybody. I know. I know. It's not Saturday or Sunday, but my computer modem went belly-up last Friday or Saturday. I don't know which day. Things were so crazy around here last week what with Bible School every night. I already think I don't have enough hours in the day to get half of what I need to get done finished and then you take out four or so hours a day for Bible School. I know that's not a lot of time to dedicate the Lord, and I know He's the master of my time. I might not even have four hours tomorrow. I hope I do. I think I will, but I can't be sure. I just have to remember the Shaker saying on that one and do my work as if I thought I had a thousand years to live and that I might die tomorrow. In other words, don't stress out, just do it the way it's supposed to be done.

And we did have a good time at Bible School. Not many kids at our little church, but the ones who were there got to have a lot of fun and learn about Jesus and the Bible. Still all us older teachers were glad when Friday came. I don't know how they used to do two weeks every summer for three hours every day. Of course more mothers were home with their kids and didn't have outside jobs. They worked hard in the field and gardens and sewing and canning, but most of them didn't have jobs at the bank or Wal-Mart or wherever. So the chores got put off by them the same as they did by me this last week. Of course, sometimes I put the chores off every week and it's beginning to show on my house.

To add to the confusion last week, we got a new fridge which meant I had to clean out the old fridge and get ready for the new one. I hate to tell you, but I'm not a housekeeper who pulls her fridge out every two or three weeks to clean behind it. It's clean now though. Then my son had a business trip to another state and my daughter-in-law rode along for a little R & R. So I had their three kids who are of course beautiful and smart and fun, but they also wear their old grammy out after a while. But none of that is the real reason I'm late posting this week. That's the modem's fault. Every time I plugged the computer line into the phone jack, the phone started ringing non-stop. Not good. But I put the new modem in this morning while the kids ate breakfast and it seems to be working okay. So far.

Tomorrow I have to get back to work on my new book. I got behind on my daily page quota last week because of Bible School and now I've missed two days playing with the grandkids. I'm going to have to make the keyboard sing the rest of the week to even make a fair showing. But I think I know what's happening next in the story. That's always good. Now if I just knew a little more about what's going to happen after that. Oh well, the words have always come before. Maybe they will again.

The release date for The Outsider is getting closer and so is the arrival date of my twin grandsons. My daughter-in-law (the one in WV) is even more anxious for August to get here than I am. She's already having a hard time finding a way to get comfortable sitting or lying down. I, of course, am anxiously anticipating both events.

I have to close. My kitchen is a disaster. I was helping the little one (she just turned two) brush her teeth and get ready for bed and the older ones (six and eight) along with a neighbor girl kept asking me about making glaze for doughnuts. I thought they were just curious. I should have known better than that. There is a light dusting of confectioner's sugar on the cabinets and the floor and who knows where else. Neat is not my grandson's middle name, but he was giving it the old college try. And we got glaze made before they went home. I've still got glaze in case I find any stray doughnuts, I suppose.

Have a great week.