Brain Overload and Creativity

Due to a system crash late last week I am now VERY far behind on just about everything I have to complete. Work is the one thing I haven't been lacking lately and now I have it in just about every description backing up in great piles while I spent 3 days recovering my system. Work from my own clients, from Speculate clients, web work, design work, layout work, illustration work - and they are all jostling for for processor time (both silicon and meat based) and, in this heat, I'm not sure what will give out first, my PC or my cerebrum! The work is coming so thick and fast that I've moved a mattress into my office so I can get sleep whenever I can. I suppose my wife is sleeping better due to me not being there snoring all night, so I guess there is some consolations.

Why then, with all this work, does my brain find now a convenient time to bombard me with story ideas? Why, when I've got more to worry about than there are hours in the day, does my Muse think it is funny to suddenly turn up and spray magic 'creativity powder' everywhere? Especially when I know that, when all the work is over and I have a second to relax, the last thing I'll feel like doing is sitting in front of a word-processor and working. Why couldn't things be a little more balanced, and spread out, so my life is a little more manageable?

Anyway, I've put "A Plan for Pierrot" away for now. I just wasn't finding the right track to the ending and it was driving me mad trying to find it. I know the ending... I'm just not sure how to get there. So, in the bottom drawer it goes.

I'm not worried about this - leaving stories behind - especially after I've written 5,000 words. Why? Because something happened the other night to reassure me that old stories never die, they just go silent while they work themselves out.

I was just putting my head to my pillow the other night when I thought "Black Holes" and remembered an article I had read in New Scientist a couple of months ago. I could think of no trigger for this and thought to myself, "Where did that come from?" My subconscious answered, "You know why. Those paragraphs you wrote years ago. You could use it there".

I knew exactly which paragraphs too! I'd written them maybe 5 or 6 years ago. The beginnings of a Science Fiction short called "And the Dead Do Speak" that had led me nowhere. I'd liked the opening a lot, but had no idea at all of what to do with it. The entire thing, including the title, where a mystery to me. I wrote those paragraphs, tried to work it out for a while, and then stashed it away thinking I'd never worry about it again.

Where were those paragraphs now? I couldn't find printouts, or doc, or txt, or rtf files. Nothing in my filing cabinet (not surprising, I'm hopeless at filing). Thankfully my wife is a wonderful archivist. She keeps every scrap I've ever written, rescues them from the bin or from the kid's scrap paper pile and squirrels them away. I never knew this, but boy am I glad she's been doing it!

She had a printed copy of "And the Dead Do Speak" for me to work on! Wahoo! Now to finish off that story...when I can find some time!

Anyway here are those first few paragraphs that had been hanging around in my subconscious for so long, just waiting for an idea to explain and expand them. They need a little work, but I'm still pretty happy with something I wrote over 5yrs ago;

Their bodies float around me in perfect orbits, inscribing great arcs of beauty across an endless field of stars. I have plotted all of their courses and they have become the sun and the moon to me.

I know that I can sit in the forward lounge at what the ship tells me is 1400 hours GMT and watch Lieutenant Culver drift slowly past my field of view. He is wearing nothing and his skin is pale to the point of luminescence, mouth open as if a word has been caught there at the moment of his death. At 22:37 Doctor Tyler will pass gracefully by, invoking in me the same tides of emotion that she did when she was alive.

There are others, scattered along the length of the ship, and I spend my time travelling the tube trains to various makeshift observatories: officer cabins with two metre wide windows; crew cabins punctured by fish-bowl sized portholes; lounges, atriums, and arboretums open to space but for a thin, ship generated membrane. From these places I watch like an eager astronomer spotting for comets, marking the days by my crew's revolutions.

It could all be mine to roam and play, this great ship of steel and glass, but I have my places and my spaces and I haunt them like a ghost. Sometimes there is the feeling that this may be more than just an apt metaphor for the habit of my movements.

I've also started work on another short story, something a little bit more fun than the sombre SF piece above. This one is going to be a sort of Alternate-History-Steampunk-Horror story and it is to be entitled "The Sinners Abroad and the Curse of the Pharaoh's Express". It is to be set in 1867 and feature Mark Twain (as the hero), a haunted train, and a Mummy's Curse :)

Please brain, give me the space to write these stories!

I Am Furious!!

You know that system crash I mentioned the other day? Well, I went and bought an external back-up drive (Seagate 300GB External) so I didn't lose any data. It worked great when I plugged it in and all my data (Images, Accounting Data, Client Files etc) was backed up in about one fifth the time it would have taken me to burn everything to CD.

I've also been so busy that I haven't had a chance to copy everything back across yet. A lot of stuff I have, and that includes all the Speculate client web sites, Aurealis files, and my illustration and design images.

But there is also a lot of stuff I haven't got around to yet transferring back onto the system yet, and that includes - all the files for MY clients, all of my Accounting, and my images for the Shards anthology.

So, I turn on my system this morning, turn on the external drive intending to copy everything else across and... the external drive won't start!! NOTHING! No power light or anything. I can here it hum, and click a couple of times, but that's it. Nothing at all.

AND MY DATA IS STILL ON THERE!! The only copies of some of it!

This drive (a Seagate 300GB External - just so you know the brand NOT to buy) is less that 5 days out of the box. It was installed as per instructions. It was used as per instructions. It has sat in the same spot since the day it was installed and has not been moved or bumped. And it DOESN'T WORK!

And do you think Seagate have any sort of Australian technical support!? NO! It is US (and today is Thanksgiving) or Singapore, and they don't open their Call Centre until 10am Australia Time (Australia Time? What the fuck is that? No such beast.) I assume they mean 10am AEDT, not AEST, because it is past 10am AEST and there is still no answer from them!!

If I have lost my files I am just screwed. So totally screwed... and it is because I bought a back-up device that I am screwed! Unbelievable. I am just so pissed off!

I'm going to stop writing now. I am going to go for a walk and take many deep breaths.

Data Disaster Update

It looks like the Firewire trick worked! It reset the HD unit and now I can start it up again and access my files. They're all being copied back to my main hard-drive as I type.

The only problem now seems to be that the unit won't start unless you unplug BOTH the power and USB cables and plug them back in again. Had me scared for a 2nd when it wouldn't start again after the first time, but now I've learnt that trick I'm a bit happier.

NOT happy enough to keep the damn thing though, although I'm not sure what my chances of a refund will be. Probably NIL, so I'll have to just look at exchanging it for a MAXTOR unit instead.

Arghhh! Never buying SeaGate again.