Freedom - Poem

Freedom

The crowd gathers, listening,
To those who scream so loud,
About injustice and the war
And how they are not proud

Of the men who went to war
To combat terror's reign.
They sat we have no business there,
That we are all insane.

They burn our Flag, our Banner true,
The symbol of our land,
Not thinking of the millions dead
So that it could stand.

They call our soldiers butchers,
And protest through the night,
Not remembering men have died,
So they could have that right.

They call our country wicked,
And say that we're a shame.
Not thinking that there, people die
For saying Jesus's name.

They call our soldiers evil,
And say they shouldn't fight;
But if everyone had that mindset,
We'd lose our every right.

So think of all the people
Who fought through mud and dust.
And all the unknown soldiers
Who died for “God We Trust”.

You have your freedom easy.
You take it for granted, see,
But remember those who died for you;
Because freedom's never free.

Unknown

Is there a "write" or wrong way?

Wow! Talk about a busy few weeks! As many of you know I am going through the beginning pains of a military activation. The tearful goodbyes, the acclimation from a dry climate to a hot & humid one, and then the poorly thought out rules. No leaving post, no alcohol, and of course, no entertainment on post. But that is okay, because I truly don't have time for entertainment. But I didn't start this post to complain, so on with the show!

I have been told that I am a discovery writer, and I believe this is true... To an extent. I don't start with a written outline, or even research and notes. I do start with a story mostly fleshed out in my mind, then sit and start writing. Often times the characters will take the story in places I hadn't originally anticipated. When I create a character, I will have a rough idea who they are supposed to be, and how big a role they will play, only to learn through their dialogue and actions that they aren't who I thought they were in the beginning.

Some might be thinking, "But wait! You are the author... Don't you dictate who they are and what they do?" My answer to this is yeah/no. I create them, give them voice, and design their setting, but their actions have to be taken into account on everything they do. If I were to force their actions, it would be apparent in my writing, and I don't want that. I sometimes feel like a parent to these characters, even getting teary eyed when one has to die. I HATE killing my characters.

The one thing I feel I can force, is the scenery. It rains when I tell it too, the sun sets and rises on my whim, and the geography is laid out rather nicely. At one point in my story, I realized that there had been no rain. So, to make up for it, I created a downpour... And one of my characters ended up getting sick. A great (IMHO) delusional scene came from that. My character was fleshed out more, his motives examined, and in the end, he was a stronger character. But none of this was in my original vision of the story. There are many, many other examples of this happening in my story.

In the end, I wouldn't say I am a cut and dried discovery writer, but rather an amalgamation of sorts.

What kind of writer are you?

Back it on up!

Aaaannnnddd.... I'm back! Sorry for the long delay, but here we go!

So over the weekend my mother's laptop went down. (It was a Dell, and despite my many comments on the quality of Dell systems over the years, she has still purchased them because of their price... And has to get new ones every couple years.) Luckily she has a geek in the family (namely me!), and I got to work on it. Unfortunately the hard drive was bad, data unrecoverable by any of the means at my disposal. My sister had been using this laptop for work, and... Wait for it... She hadn't backed up her data. There is a saying I used to use when I worked in St. George as a computer technician at PC Innovation. "If you didn't back it up, then it wasn't important." Many people have their entire lives on their computers, but never consider the very good possibility that something will break, and all will be lost. I have known people who have lost all their wedding photos, years worth of financial records, and on a more personal note, I have had to rewrite the beginning of my novel 3 times, due to not backing up properly. (See how I tied that into being an aspiring author?)

With today's technology it is so easy to backup the important things, everybody should be doing it. There are many options available as far as backup suites and automated software, but in truth, the best way I have found is to simply copy the data you need to an external source. Whether that is an extra hard drive, thumb drive, or even to the internet. Thumb drives are cheap, and will fit most people's need for backup space. Those that need more room can go for an external hard drive. My preferred method is call Dropbox. What it does is create a folder on your computer. Anything saved to that folder is automatically backed up to the web. Better yet, because it gets backed up to the web, you can set it up on multiple computers, and access (or update) the files from anywhere. The next best part is that you can get almost 3 gigs (gigabytes) of storage for free! (Full disclosure: I am in no way financially tied/linked to Dropbox. I have a free account with 2.75GB of available storage. If you choose to use the above link to create an account with them, I will get credit for it. I recommend you do your own research, and choose for yourself how to go about storing your backups.)

"Well, that's all fine and dandy," you might be saying, "but that doesn't really help me back up, just tells me where to put it." I used to have a hard time with my wife. She would do a lot of photo editing, then browse the internet, get a virus, and loose her work. Naturally I was to blame, because I hadn't backed up her work for her, and she didn't know how. (Yeah, I know... I didn't marry a geek, but she makes up for it in other areas.) I created a batch file (more on that later) that would backup all of her data for her. 3 months later I checked... and she hadn't done a backup in 3 months, go fig. The moral here is, BACK UP your data!

Now I will help you create a batch file to help you backup your data:
1. Right-click on a blank spot on your desktop, and select "New" -> "Text Document"
2. Name the file "Backup.txt" without the quotes.
3. Open the file, and copy and paste the following text into it.

@echo off
@echo WARNING!
@echo This will overwrite anything
@echo in the destination folder.
@echo Press CTRL-C to cancel, or
pause
@echo Backing up files
xcopy /e /v /y *.* c:\Dropbox\
@echo Backup complete
pause

4. Save the files as "Backup.bat" (Again, without the quotes)
5. Place this batch file in any folder you want backed up.
6. Run the file whenever you want to backup.

The batch file is pretty simple, and can easily be modified to fit your needs. Say you only need your pictures backed up? In that case, change *.* to *.jpg (or *.mp3, or *.(whatever extension the file(s) have)) The batch was written assuming you have a Dropbox account, and created the folder on the "C:\" drive. If you want to backup somewhere else, just change the last of that line to the destination. C:\ is the drive letter. If you are using another drive, change C to that drive letter (i.e. D:\ or G:\)

For a walkthru on making this automated, visit here.

Questions, comments, or better ideas? PLEASE lemme know!