Do As I Say, Not As I Do.

For the love of God...don't do what I did a couple nights ago.  I was attempting to consolidate all the chapters of my manuscript into a single document, and...well, I fucked up.  The worst thing that could possibly happen, happened.  I committed the cardinal sin.  That one thing they warn you about.  The one thing that only dumb asshats like myself do.

I ended up deleting about 80% of my manuscript.

First off, I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing.  I was cutting, pasting, deleting, cutting, pasting, deleting...watching TV, yawning, eating, drinking, yawning, and then...*delete*  I deleted.  The wrong.  Document.

No problem, right?  Just go to the recycle bin?  Wrong.  I was working with the files on my thumb drive, and once you delete them from there, they don't go to the recycle bin.  There are just gone.  I did a computer recovery, setting it back to what it was a few days ago, but that didn't help.  The auto backups don't include the thumb drive.  Learn from me, my friends.  Learn from my stupidity.

So to the Internet I flew.  I downloaded multiple free file recovery programs.  Some were crappy, some were okay.  You get what you pay for.  Thankfully, because Baby Jesus loves me (or maybe not, because he allowed me to fuck up so badly), I was able to recover most of my stuff.  Some is corrupt for some odd reason, but I just happen to have a stash of various chapters (in varying stages of completion) buried on my computer hard drive at home and at work.  I can piece it all back together, but I'm going to have to re-write some.

Well, that's better than re-writing the entire thing, I suppose.

I leave you with this little nugget of advice, something I see every day on the wall at the office:

Well, here I am.

Greetings, gentle reader.  Inexplicably, amid the vast abyss of the Intarwebs, you’ve stumbled across my page.  Perhaps you’ll stick around awhile.

Let me first introduce myself as “C”, and for the moment I am neither male, nor female.  I am simply…C.  I will remain luxuriantly anonymous and dancing naked in the cyberstreets until I’ve met my goals.  Speaking of which, my goals are thus:

-       Gracefully exit the military around the year 2021(ish).

-       Become a published author relatively near that same timeframe

-       Earn a reasonable living off my creative works.

-       Maintain or exceed my current lifestyle.

It’s not that I’m against the military or anything.  I have no regrets about joining; it’s been good to me.  But I don’t want to do it for the rest of my life.  I’ll be satisfied with my twenty-year stint.

I’ve already started working on a story, one I’m convinced will make me an extravagant millionaire, so that I may get to live comfortably while my spouse continues slaving away in the workplace.

…Okay, maybe that’s a little unrealistic.

I’d like to have my book ready to go, complete and prepared for submission to agent at least 1.5 or 2 years before my departure from the military.  I’ve done some calculations, and according to my research, I’ll need to write about seventeen words a day for the next eight years if I want to achieve the 50,000-word novel mark.  Seems doable, considering I write a lot more than seventeen words each time I sit down to add a little here and there.  But then again, I don’t do it every day.  I should probably consider making that regular routine.

But yes, my story.  It will be science-fiction in nature, taking place across a long span of time.  I’ve been using a lot of details based on my own personal interests and professional experiences, so there’s definitely some military stuff going on.  I’m also a bit of a science nut, but it’s more of a hobby.

The main character’s name is James.  I haven’t decided yet if I like it, or if I’ll change it.  For the moment the name is serving as a placeholder.

I won’t give away too much just now, but I’m considering dropping hints along my journey.  That’s why I’ve created this blog, so I can share in the learning process and document my frantic scramble to attain my dream.  As you can see, I’m not in too big of a hurry.  I’d like to take my time and learn everything there is to know, start to finish, about the process.  And perhaps, once I’ve become outrageously famous, I can also use this blog in an official capacity to entertain and inform fans.

So, feel free to tag along for the ride.  Maybe we can learn a thing or two together :)