eah, third time.

Was relaxing on my vacation. Woke up and thought, I just finished that Orion Nebula book. Need to knock out a review before I forget too much.

What could be nicer, more “writery” than to sit in a side bedroom looking at rain and sea and write a wonderful review? I just needed a tweed jacket and I’d be set. The cat even curled up on my lap.

So, wrote out a brilliant first two paragraphs, describing the first time I’d seen the nebula with my scope. What was that big orange star called? Like bug-juice something-r-other? Yeah, Michael Keaton even made a movie about it. But how is it spelled? Thankfully with the internet that’s right at your fingertips. Typed in Orion and got a couple of pages that denoted Betelgeuse, yeah, just like that.

Except I’d used the same window I was accessing my site on. When I back-arrowed to it, the page was still in place but the text was gone.

Dammit.

So I sat down and rewrote it. This isn’t a bad thing, I comforted myself with. Often coding or writing is better on the second draft. You’re a writer. You can beat these things.

So, finally, all finished. Went to save it off and the categories seemed funky. Clicked save, went back to the Article Manager. Nothing there. I could actually type Orion in the search window and see my late article referenced but Joomla had lost it. I looked high and low, but it would seem that simply returning to the page via back-arrow didn’t mean I was actually all hooked up to the website. And all that newer, better writing? Gone.

Dammit.

I really didn’t want to do this a third time. Instead, I wrote a letter to a friend, walked around for a bit, played with the cat (who, frankly, didn’t want to be played with). Finally I sat down. Like eating a plate of cold porridge, I struggled through the third rewrite (saving every paragraph off and getting out into the Manager to make sure it was there). Finally, carefully, painstakingly, I got it in and set for it’s Sunday debut (next Sunday, in fact). It was done. Whew.

And that’s writing, real writing. Not comfy chairs and warm cats and easy prose. It’s writing something over and over until you are sick of it, drafts and revisions and rewrites. And it’s the self-pressure to keep pushing, even when a wet walk on the beach looks a lot nicer by comparison. But that’s what it takes to get your copy out, a full-field effort.

Watch for it Sunday.

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