~~These wildflowers aren’t troublesome. Necessary for the spirit and for the bees. These are Dutchman’s britches, my mom’s favorite wildflower. For my favorites, I think the trilliums are hard to beat and of course the Jack in the Pulpit is fun to find in the woods. If you look really closely at this picture you can see the little spider that’s spinning a web onto the middle flower. I didn’t even notice that until I loaded the picture on the computer. Last fall I took my camera out and tried to find a spiderweb for a post I did on how a story line is like a spiderweb with all the interconnections and couldn’t find a good web anywhere. And now here this little spider was spinning right in front of my eyes and I didn’t even notice him. Or maybe her.
~~But no, the troublesome but necessary thing is my computer. It had a major glitch last night and today. Spent an hour talking to this one troubleshooting guy. He couldn’t fix it. Had me punching this key and that key and going into Safe Mode and to the C:/ prompt. I don’t know why something called Safe Mode makes me so nervous, but I’m sure my computer will never be safe again when I go into that program. My son would be laughing at me now if he saw that. He’s a computer techie. Anyway I finally called the right guy and he had it all working in five minutes. Just goes to show you got to know what’s wrong. The first guy didn’t and the second guy did. Shame I didn’t call the right guy first. But the best thing is I can read my e-mails again. And there was more work on there, but good news too that if I can come up with a nice blurb for my new book, The Seeker, it might get some nice pub. That’s the necessary part of the computer and internet. You’ve got to have it these days. So you put up with the troublesome parts. And if you’re like me, wish you knew more about why it gets in trouble.
~~Another necessary but troublesome thing is my titling questionnaire about my book in progress. The one I should be writing more words for right now to meet that looming deadline. Can you believe they actually want me to tell them a title when I have no idea? I mean just because it’s only a couple of months until I’m supposed to have it finished. This one is my fourth Shaker book and the others have all been The something. The Outsider. The Believer. The Seeker. But I have run out of ideas to go with The. At least anything that fits with this story. I’m hoping the perfect title will pop in my head before I finish the questionnaire.
~~Then there’s that place where they ask you to come up with a couple of snappy sentences to say what your book’s about. Two sentences to describe a 100,000 word plus book! If I was good at snappy sentences I’d be writing ad copy. Oh. I guess that’s what I’m needing to do. Write some copy that will help the publishers sell my many more words. As you can probably tell, I’m not crazy about filling these things out. I don’t know if any author is, but – and here’s the not only necessary part but the very welcome part of this troublesome task – but it means I have a new book coming out in the future. And that’s not troublesome at all. That’s exciting! So I’ll keep brainstorming on that title and strain my brain to come up with those snappy sentences.
~~Hope all your necessary tasks are no trouble at all for you this week. And maybe even fun.