Hacking, writing and life

Three of my biggest sites got hacked this weekend - what I took to be a simple database issue was actually something far more serious, so I've killed the blog databases for the moment.
You might wonder what that has to do with writing?
Well, for a start, I didn't keep ANY of my blog articles anywhere other than these blogs. More fool me. So I'm now backing up more often than before (daily instead of weekly) and writing my blog posts offline, instead of on the fly, and in the blog sites themselves.
This is teaching me a really nice habit though - before I'd forget to trigger my spellchecker before posting - now, before I upload it I spell AND grammar check about six times, mainly because I have to. Once in Word, once in notepad (to strip out all of the code that office adds and is completely pointless in blogs) and a final time when I put it live.
This gap of a couple of hours between writing and posting also does me the world of good, because I'm now seeing where my posts do and don't make perfect sense.
Life wise, I've been garnering 70% marks for hand in essay style assignments, so life is good on the University front. On the family front, things are tough - my youngest is special needs, and hard work, but she's also SO worth it, so we're weathering that little storm as best we can. 'Work' wise (read that novels and my own blogs), I'm doing ok. They tend to be the last thing I pay attention to, and most of my sites are just languishing now, so I'm trying to decide what to do with them. Its amazing how things change over a year.

I'm curious though - have you found anything 'different' - any challenges you're up against that you didn't expect - any successes or learning spots (note, NOT failures) that you've encountered?

What dreams may come

In all fairness, I’m probably going to be writing this post from 9am in the morning till around 1pm (because I have a class at 11:15 and need to leave my house at 10:15 to meet my tutor first), so it might be a little disjointed. On the other hand I might get it AND the cleaning done.

When I was a very small girl, I dreamed of being a writer. And like other small children, I had this fairly romantic notion of sitting down for a couple of hours, bashing out a book, and living happily ever after, though, to be fair, I’d already rather magnanimously decided that when I wrote that bestseller that first time out, that I’d keep writing. I loved it that much, even back then.

Fast forward to when I hit 21.
I’m a new mother, my baby is about three and a half months old, and I’ve just been given a desktop. My partner says that I’m allowed to write as long as I keep the house spotless, because he works at night.
Caring for a baby and cleaning a house left a sum total of around 1 hour to write – or do emails to communicate with other writers.
At 23 I changed things. We’d moved to a bigger house, and I’d taught myself to stay up till 4am and write. The house was slightly messy sometimes, and my ex partner was a pain in the proverbial about what he wanted (‘where’s the best seller then eh?’) but I still wrote.
And I kicked him out at 24.

It’s taken a while for me to find my balance, and sometimes it goes completely, like this week, when I haven’t cleaned the house AT ALL beyond the basics. But I’m a University student (which rox!) and I’m writing (which was always my dream) and I have the support of a wonderful man.

SO – here’s my challenge to you guys. This year, find a way to do what YOU want without destroying what you need. I know, it sounds fairly glib when I put it that way, but there’s always a way to find your way to what you want – because ‘wants’ like writing are just ‘needs’ that the soul can’t express without sounding selfish. Those of us that are writers NEED that. It’s part of our DNA, and without it, we’re very lost, and probably in pieces, in ways most of us don’t like to think about.

I always dreamed I’d be a writer – I thought, by now, I’d have sold a couple of books, but I suppose that just wasn’t to be. Not yet anyway.
The house is calling me now. I’ve got dishes, and character conversations, hovering and planning to do.
Have a great week!