What Do You Do When You're Blue

I, apparently, make appointments, everything I have put off in the past year or so. I visit the orthopedist and the ophthalmologist and the dentist and the ob-gyn. I get my hair cut and my annual mammogram and the 30,000-mile checkup on my car. I return all the things I've been meaning to return and check out the library books I've been intending to read.

I sort files and clean house and make myself start exercising and eating more carefully, because I know all these things will ultimately make me start feeling a little better. (And if not, at least I will have a new haircut and new glasses, a car that works well, a clean house, a stack of books to read, and the knowledge that all my check-ups are behind me for another year.)

Then I read about the heartache a young friend is facing with her mother's rapidly spreading cancer and I realize, however much I may be hurting, it is nothing compared to the hurt she is enduring, at a far younger age than when I lost my father. And I know there is nothing I can do for her, other than tell her that she is stronger than she knows and that I'm proud of her for bearing up under all this (she is, after all, only just turned 18), and let her know that I do understand, at least a little. And the thing I am so blue about seems, in comparison, not quite as insurmountable.

I Am Pre-Published. I Am Also Pre-Dead.

Some writers refer to themselves as pre-published, presumably to denote an optimism that they will be published.

Using that theory, I could say I am pre-famous. Pre-rich. Pre-washed-up. Pre-old. (You see where this is going.) Pre-dead.

You don't need to assign yourself an adjective. Go adjective-free. Just be a writer.

Note: Technically I'm published - with magazine and newspaper articles and chunks of health and fitness books. But my novel, LEARNING TO SWIM, doesn't come out until February 2011.

When You Send Your Novel Out into the Universe ...

... you never quite know what response you're going to get. And occasionally it's wonderful.

Here my friend Quinn Cummings talks about my upcoming novel, LEARNING TO SWIM. (She first mentions my book at 1.40, but it's worth watching the whole thing.)

How Long Does It Take for 15,678 Emails to Download?

A very very long time. Even when you are frantically erasing them on the server as fast as you can, in batches of 50.

It started with a computer misfire - one of those aborted starts where it insists on running a check disk and getting rid of damaged files. When my computer did boot up, my email program had disappeared. Goodbye, Mozilla Thunderbird.

I do a lot of business by email - just about everything. Email is pretty crucial to day-to-day functioning, both social and professional. I didn't panic, because I knew all my email files and settings were safely stored in the hard drive - I just had to figure out how to restart Thunderbird and direct it to those files.

One set of instructions said to find the pref.js file and if damaged, replace it with one from somewhere else. FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE? Like I'd ever heard of a pref.js file and kept a spare one tucked away. Okay, I managed to find one - I'm not even sure how - and substituting it did make my emails pop back up in a newly installed Thunderbird, but the program wouldn't work.

So I decided to uninstall Thunderbird and reinstall it. Silly me. The new version of Thunderbird is bizarre, with a mind of its own, and wants to index all your emails. While it was indexing away, I was madly trying to find the file that contains my sign-in setting so I wouldn't have to look up five different SMTP settings and recreate my 32 message filters.

Long story short: new Tbird wouldn't work. Finally I found an old Tbird version and installed it. Gave up on finding settings and started over. And figured out I needed to move my "mail" folder and some other crucial folders to the new Tbird folder.

But I keep incoming emails stored on my mac.com server until I get around to cleaning it out. And because it's very laborious to delete files on the server, I hadn't done it for a very long time.

15,678 emails ago, to be precise.

So I watched thousands of emails flow past: agent-getting, book-deal-in-progress, Staples sales, Tweets, New York Times updates and more and more and more. The last year or so of my life, in email replay.

It took four hours.

Whole process: began at 10.45 am - ended 9.30 pm.

I now plan buy a huge new backup hard drive, so all programs will be safely stored in their entirety, and I won't have to pretend I know what I'm doing when programs fail. I can just blithely reinstall.

One of the Many Reasons I Love My Internet Friends

(Quinn's blog. Quinn's book. Both rock. Seriously.)

Those Blogging Folks Who Brighten My Day

I wandered over to my friend Teresa's blog, The Dog Lived (and So Will I) and discovered, to my surprised pleasure, that she has given me an award - which has the following rules.

1. Copy the image and paste it to your blog.
OK, here it is. No one said I had to make it large.

2. List 10 things that make you happy; do one of them today.
(I'm rattling these off the top of my head.) Eating, reading, sleeping (probably not supposed to include that), writing, bicycling, building websites, playing with dogs, reading or hearing friend's manuscripts, being with friends, cleaning out the refrigerator (perhaps this should be combined with #1), seeing a good movie, kayaking (I've been only a few times, but I really liked it), playing tennis. Today I did seven of these.

3. Select 10 bloggers who brighten your day.
Teresa (of course), Quinn, Steph, Cat, Vodka Mom (yes, I do know her real name, but you don't - her profession requires that she remain anonymous ... she's a kindergarten teacher). So I only named five. I read more blogs, but these are the ones I always click on when they have new entries.

And we do all brighten each other's days in some way or another (and sometimes listen to each other's woes, whether through blogging, email, or twitter). I'm proud to call each of them my friend - I've only met one of the five in person, but have no doubt we'll all meet eventually, never mind that one is in New Zealand and one in Australia. Because friends like these are in short supply, and I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have found the five of them.

Still Time to Enter Query Critique Contest - Today!

You still have an open window this evening, 6 - 8 pm EST, to send in your query and first ten pages to take advantage of Weronika Janczuk's offer to give critiques. Weronika, although a high school student, has been interning at a publishing house reviewing queries and submissions.

Her rules:

• The contest will be open over two intervals: TUESDAY, MARCH 2ND, FROM 7AM EST - 9AM EST and 6PM EST - 8PM EST. If you would like to send your query and pages but you don't have access to your email, try LetterMeLater. Emails outside these intervals will be deleted unread.
• Email all queries and pages EMBEDDED IN THE EMAIL to weronika (dot) janczuk (at) gmail (dot) com.
• Put the word QUERY in the subject line.
• Do not submit from an email address that requires any confirmation, etc.
  
• You're welcome to submit with an unfinished manuscript.

There you go. Hop to it.