Last September, I posted about how I mislaid all the notes I’d made for a third Coventry book. It wasn’t so much plot details that I was frustrated to lose, it was all my character names and descriptions. Ultimately, I got the proposal together so I could submit it to my agent and publisher. My editor turned it down–blah blah blah–I’m over that.
I’d started writing a non-Coventry novel on my desktop, for which I made copious notes about place names and details and people names and descriptions in a document that lived on my laptop. I’ve gotten to a point where I need those notes–and THERE’S NO SUCH DOCUMENT! I’ve done electronic searches on both computers using key words and phrases–but in the wee hours of the morning, I had to accept it. Somehow, I managed to delete it.
Unless–CONFESS! Which one of you is gaslighting me?
To relax myself so some of those lost details could crawl to shore from my brain swamp, I dragged out a 1964 Simplicity pattern and made Christina Aguilera a new dress. Her name isn’t going to stay Christina Aguilera. Do you think she looks like a very special TV character named Blossom? Tom does. From certain angles, she also looks like Sarah Jessica Parker. No way am I naming her Blossom, but I could name her Jess after a character in Three Fortunes in One Cookie (female, though she was named for my by-choice-nephew Jess), or I could name her Sarah for SJP and my niece, although my niece is way prettier than this doll–and prettier than SJP, for that matter.
Or I could pretend I’m Janet Evanovich, only instead of letting y’all compete to name my next book, you can name my doll with a prize to be determined. Maybe I could name a character after YOU in my next book.
Um…what was your name again?
She looks a bit like a Clarissa.
She actually does. Isn’t it funny how we have mental images that go with names? This is one case where we seem to have the same image.
Harley
Do you think my sister’s dog wants a doll named after him? More to the point, does he want a Christina Aguilera doll named after him?
Food for thought.
shes not Skankalera anymore… she’s changed, and I am sure that Harley is a noble beast that would be honored to have a heroine named after him.
Cynthia? Sorry you lost your document, how frustrating!
Thanks!
CONFESS
No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition!!
It’s odd how creativity follows that path sometimes. I’ve done the same with other projects, and suddenly –poof!– it’s gone, usually just before finalizing. It used to happen to me occasionally in LJ land too. So, I can certainly understand your frustration. I hope you can remember some of the work you did.
Re: CONFESS
Have you ever seen the movie Sliding Doors? They make good use of that Monty Python quote.
Thanks!
Re: CONFESS
No, I haven’t… I’ll have to go look for it. The imdb makes it sound like one of the more recent Doctor Who episode (Turn Left). In previous episodes, you see a version, and then she’s taken back in time at a traffic intersection, where a left-or-right decision ends up having a much larger hidden impact.
She does look like Blossom! I was channel surfing yesterday, hoping to find a baseball game to fall asleep to since I had to work, and the gal who played her was on ‘what not to wear.’ I should look it up on line to see how she looked after they were done.
I got sucked into a “What Not to Wear” marathon in New Orleans one afternoon.
that doll looks like miley cyrus…who i don’t care for.
did you check the temp files on your computer? sometimes when i’m not paying attention i hit save and that’s where it goes.
Yep, checked all the .tmp files, too. I’m pretty sure I saved Coventry 3’s outline as New Book’s outline some time back. No computer is a match for dumb operator error.
i figured you’d already thought about that, but just in case.
well, i hope it magically shows up when you aren’t looking for it!
Stranger things have happened.
Instead of doing a search for the FILE do a search for one of the names you used, something that might appear in the body of the text. My Mac search pulls up everything that has that name or key word imbeded IN the text.
Good luck.
One more suggestion: Sometimes WORD saves things directly to a file it calls Documents. Try to search for that file and look inside. It’s possible that since you did not save it yourself, WORD saved it automatically into the document folder naming it with the first random words that appear in your text.