I don’t write to be famous, I don’t write to be known, I write because I am and I want to be read. How sad to fill a room with paintings no one sees or play music no one hears. Writing is talking without sound, singing without score and dancing without movement and yet, it is all of them. It is a solitary art conjured from thought and expressed by the need to communicate.

HEAD SLAPS, SPEED BUMPS and LIGHTBULBS, one woman's WTF, oops and ah-ha moments of life.

They were published once, and as every writer knows, once is not enough.




Saturday, April 27, 2013

Dog hair...the other condiment



            I just wrote a decent essay about my dog Harley. It was heartfelt and a tribute to my sweet old boy. It was kind of sad too. I wrote about him being a shed machine and how when I leave the house a little bit of him goes with me everywhere and that someday soon I won’t have his dog hair tumbleweeds to fret over.
            I wrote that my kids used to say, “The best thing about going away to college was no dog hair”. They missed Harley but how he went from room to room looking for them, I know he missed them more.        
            The essay was five-hundred words or so, just right for a blog post. But something happened. When I saved the document I deleted it. Not sure how it happened but it’s gone.
            I do not have it in me to write the piece again. It’s Saturday night and after an entire day of making pretty with springtime yard clean-up I am exhausted.

            Have you ever lost that which you did not have within yourself the energy to restore?

7 comments:

  1. What you can do: On your Blogger dashboard, look for and click on the "Deleted blogs" link, and undelete the blog. If your blog hasn’t been recently deleted by you or a team member, you won’t see this link. Once you select the undelete option, everything will return to normal.

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  2. Here's a snippet:

    The picture of the sleeping dog, it was taken by my daughter one afternoon; she did not have it in her heart to shoo him off the couch. For some unknown reason stories of much-loved pets have been popping up, on line and in life. In 2010 shortly after I started this blog I wrote about Harley, the good-boy in the picture which accompanies much of my writing. This is as good a time as any to re-post my sweet boy's story. This is Harley's story. To tell about Harley I must first tell about Brandy. Brandy was a fine old girl, quirky, brave, and a love. She was part golden, part yellow ...

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Cook, I still have that piece. I'm taking the whole Doris Day approach, Que Sera Sera what will be will be.

      Delete
  3. Ahhhhh! That would drive me crazy! But in the grand scheme of things, you've got the right attitude about it,

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    Replies
    1. Years ago I worked on an old 'Adam' word processor. I was pounding out a project for a magazine and as I was typing away and feeling really good about how everything was coming together the 'Adam' froze. I called their help desk and as I feared...12 pages were lost. 12 pages ! No auto-save back then, no searching deletes, it was gone. I was devastated.
      I rewrote better copy and learned three things: save, save, save.
      Of course now I've learned one thing more, pay attention while saving or I might just click on the wrong thing.

      Providence has taught me that things like that happen for a reason, either it's a learning experience or the piece should be shelved for awhile or maybe forever.

      Delete
  4. I've lost some dogs that I told myself I could never replace, but then I did. I am currently living with two long-haired dogs, and I know what you're talking about.

    I lost an entire 1st draft of a novel to a hard drive crash. That was years ago, and even though I think I have most of it scattered across a bunch of emails, I haven't attempted to restore it.

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    Replies
    1. As much as I can't stand the dog hair I will miss it when it's gone.
      Paul if I lost a whole novel I think I'd bury my pen and take up the Saxophone.

      Delete