A Background Footnote

What I forgot to mention below, of course, is that I have been suffering from writer's block. I had made progress in overcoming by the simple expedient of setting a writing goal of 1,000 words a day. I gave myself permission to write about anything, just as long as I reached the 1,000-word goal at one sitting. I also learned that my hand muscles have considerably weakened since I last did any serious, consistent writing. Sometimes, very often in fact, I'd have to pause because the muscles in my palms and wrists began to ache. 

But who cares, right? It was the same experience that anyone undergoes when they want to get back in shape, and after a few days of this 1,000-word a day exercise, the pain was still there, but the words were beginning to flow and so were the ideas. I'd actually managed to resolve several logistical issues and make plotting decisions that had baffled me for years. I'd actually managed to do all that when the computer's hard drive failed. 

Sigh.

The person at Apple said very kindly, "Some of the best books I've read were the results of the authors having to rewrite them because they lost the original." Amen. That's the viewpoint I'm going to have to take. Amen.