Tammy Setzer Denton, Author
St. Charles, MO
TAMMY SETZER DENTON
Writer
Page & Paragraph
Posted on April 10, 2016 at 6:57 PM |
My writing took a serious hit during the last half of 2015. It wasn't pretty. The flashdrive on which I kept my creative writing crapped out on me. At first, I wasn't even all that concerned since I had been diligently backing up my computer. HOWEVER, I was living in a fool's paradise. While I was backing up everything on the laptop, my flashdrive with over five years of creative writing was not included as part of the laptop even when it was plugged in. Who knew? Apparently, everyone but me. When I bemoaned my loss, I found little sympathy among the more technologically advanced. I tried several data recovery programs and took the flashdrive to various local computer stores. Nothing. I finally decided to ship the flashdrive to a place in Florida which advertised recovery for about $100. I could afford that. It wasn't until a few days later, the Florida recovery team emailed me with the bad news that my flashdrive was a "more complicated" model called a monolith. To recover data from this type of flashdrive would set me back $500 with no guarantee as to how much or how little they could find. Either way, the price was $500--a sum I couldn't afford. I asked that it be shipped back and it now sits in a drawer that I don't like to look at. Reeling from the loss of my "babies" (yes, I labored to create each short story, novella, and novel), I couldn't write. I fixated on what I lost even though I couldn't remember everything that was on the drive, even though I found copies of some of my works. Until I had thoroughly mourned their loss, I couldn't put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Instead, I read. I read books by authors who hadn't lost their flashdrives or at least knew enough to back them up or put them in a cloud. I read good fiction, bad fiction, and dare I say it? Romances. Here's my 2015 Reading List: 2015 Reading List 1.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman 2.
The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric 3.
First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple by Cameron West, PhD 4.
The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon 5.
The Accidental Santera by Irete Lazo 6.
Rant
by Chuck Palahniuk 7.
Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson 8.
Women and Ghosts by Alison Lurie 9.
The Widow’s Walk by Robert Barclay 10. Chasing Rumi by Roger Houseden 11. The Short
Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephanie
Meyer 12. The Robe of
Skulls by Vivian French 13. Invisible Boy
by Cornelia Read 14. The Bone
Church by Victoria Dougherty 15. Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton 16. Cane River by Lalita Tademy 17. Famous
Writers School by Steven Carter 18. In the Woods by Tana French 19. Me, Dead Dad,
& Alcatraz by Chris Lynch 20. The Junk-Drawer
Corner-Store Front-PorchBlues by John R. Powers 21. Going Away
Shoes by Jill McCorkle 22. Incantation by Alice Hoffman 23. The
Foretelling by Alice Hoffman 24. A Shortcut In
Time by Charles Dickinson 25. Temptation by Jude Deveraux 26. Daughter of
Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor 27. Darkness
Becomes Her by Kelly Keaton 28. High Tide by Jude Deveraux 29. Hope: A
Tragedy by Shalom Auslander 30. The Mystic
Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death
by Charlie Houston 31. The Right
Hand of Evil by John Saul 32. Travels in
the Scriptorium by Paul Auster 33. The Twelve
Terrors of Christmas by John Updike 34. Gossamer by Lois Lowry 35. These Is My
Words by Nancy E. Turner 36. Black Magic
Sanction by Kim Harrison 37. White Witch,
Black Curse by Kim Harrison 38. The Gift of
Years: Growing Older Gracefully by
Sister Joan Chittister I found some new authors (to me) and re-read some of my favorites. I mourned for my lost works, and slowly healed. Today, I wrote about 3,000 words on a story that didn't exist even in my mind until a few weeks ago. It felt good to write again. Perhaps, someday when I have an extra $500 laying around, I'll pay to get the data off that flashdrive, but until then I'll have to content myself with producing new and hopefully, better works. Who knows? Maybe a fresh start is exactly what I needed. |
Categories: Books in General, Everyday Writing, new novels, works in progress, kidney failure, transplants, Transplant tourism, china
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