I’m Melting, I’m Melting . . . bzzzt Zip!

There are many aspects of a writer’s life, many tools of the trade to learn and master but one important thing often overlooked is the basic tool we employ. Yup, those pesky computers, laptops, gadgets and electronic gizmos galore. Without them we would all be reduced to pen and paper, or replacing messy ink ribbons in the old clunky typewriters of yore. They were fine for a time but we have moved on to bigger and better (?) things, at least until something goes wrong.

For me it was three Trojans (not Brad Pitt), one virus (no pigs or birds), one embedded spyware (definitely not James Bond) and seventy two, yes, seventy two, warning thing-a-ma-jigs. Apparently they had been setting me up for disaster for some time because with one little click, it was a barrage of pop-ups and then a quick death by strangulation. My computer was no longer my own. It would not let me access the internet; it would not let me do much of anything. Pop ups claiming to help me get rid of the bugs were everywhere but I’m told they probably activated them instead. It became apparent that my security system was not so secure and once those buggers got started, they disabled, reconfigured and reconnected whatever dots they wanted to.

After getting some much needed help to determine the damage, my computer was taken back to ground zero and born again. Luckily for me my help knew how to save my document files on to an external hard drive while reanimating my electronic corpse; otherwise I would have lost the entire contents of my last days work. The dedicated writers of Wichita Area Romance Authors have stated numerous times the necessity of backing up your work to some external device by either a thumb drive, external hard drive, CD disk or my own personal favorite: emailing my work to myself to store in cyberspace. When your computer has a meltdown either through old age, lightening or sabotage, it’s the luck of the draw as to whether your work can be saved. So be smart, save EVERYTHING somewhere else and then you can rest peacefully knowing that your “babies” will still be there to greet you in the morning.

My last word of wisdom for the day; do some research on security programs for your computer. Ours was a popular one but obviously not a very good one. Check with several computer technicians to see which one they recommend and when you get a consensus, change. There is at least one good security program that you can download for free from: download.com. So do yourself a favor, save yourself a ton of money, do your homework and make your work environment virus free.