Week 31 - Jumping the Gun

 

Update – I think I may be a week behind on these updates. That’s fine; they’re pretty much the same anyway. If I find I’m a week short at the end of the year, I’ll just do a New Year’s catchup. Technically I already have a book out on sub, but I need more than that to count this year, and this blog, as a success. A sale before the end of the year would be nice, but that won’t happen unless I sub, and for that to happen I need to write things. And fast, before people with AI programs start flooding the market. Better make this blog short; time’s a-wastin’.

I’m still working on the two projects, the second draft of the detective story and a first draft of a M/M romance. Some days it’s both, some days it’s one or the other. I’m trying to cut out the days when it’s neither and I just write flash. The romance just surprised me with a sudden swerve I wasn’t expecting, as the love interest just revealed himself as an incubus. That’ll definitely spice up the sex scenes.

I miss my Hong Kong bots. Their huge numbers made me feel successful. Singapore’s okay, but it isn’t the same. Just wait’ll I start selling books and get popular. Then Hong Kong will be sorry.

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I don’t have much of a topic this week, so I’m going to wing it. See if a couple of things that happened to me recently can be turned into a life lesson. I’m a writer, and turning life into stories is what we do so yeah, this better work.

The first incident involved the death of my ancient flashlight and the purchase of a new one. The other week a bad storm knocked out the power, reminding me how dependent I’ve become on electricity. Yes, the laptop has a battery, which I quickly discovered doesn’t work. I haven’t used it in months, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Sure, I could write longhand, but not after it got dark (power went out a little after 4 pm and, as it turned out, was out for four hours). That’s when the flashlight came into play. I wrote a quick update in my journal and scribbled a flash scene, then settled in to read for a while. Then the flashlight abruptly winked out, forcing me into an early bedtime. The power came back around 10 and I reset all the clocks and went back to bed. No problems.

The next day I went out and got new batteries for the flashlight. Only to find they didn’t work. Apparently the little lightbulb had burned out; that would explain why it died so suddenly instead of the light simply dimming. So: new flashlight time. Got one at a reasonable price that came with batteries, brought it home, tried it out…and it didn’t work either. I tried the new batteries I’d gotten for the old flashlight; no difference. Life can be a pain in the ass.

There was a logical and very simple explanation, which fortunately I discovered before I embarrassed myself by taking everything back to the store. I went through the battery process again, but this time I noticed a small paper tab on the underside of the flashtlight top (the part you unscrew to load the batteries). The tab read, “Remove before use.” I did so. The metal tip of the bulb socket could now connect with the pole on the battery and everything worked fine. I hadn’t thought to look for a tab because I haven’t bought a flashlight in over twenty years. From what I recall, you had to buy batteries separately too. Times have changed. Live and learn.

 A couple of seconds of paying closer attention saved me from a return trip to the hardware store and being humiliated in front of the store clerks. Sometimes you are the problem. Take a deep breath, slow down, go over everything a step at a time and make sure you’ve covered all the bases. Then take everything back to the store and go full-on Karen on the manager. Don’t forget your receipt.

In the other case, I did jump the gun, though I prefer to think of it as “being proactive.” I ordered some merch from a company in Texas. It was shipped UPS with an email tracking number I could use to follow its progress. Things were fine until it arrived in my town, where delivery duties were turned over to the local post office, which is about a mile from my house. The last time I ordered something from this place, it also arrived at this same post office, which somehow relabled the package and sent it to another PO 20-30 miles away. So when my current package, which was listed as “out for delivery” failed to arrive at my house during my usual mail delivery time, I was understandably worried.

I waited a couple of hours. No package on my porch. I went out and checked our communal mailbox (I’m in a mobile home park). No package. Finally I went to the post office in person to check on things. I showed them the tracking number. “That’s no good,” they told me. “When it gets here from UPS it’s in a bag of packages. We scan that in with our own tracking number. You should have that.” Well, I didn’t. The original tracking number said my PO had accepted the UPS delivery the day before. They checked in the back; no package with my name on it. “Maybe UPS still has it. Wait a couple of days.”

This is frustrating. This was the second time I’d had a package make it all the way from Texas to within a mile of my address only to have it somehow vanish between my house and the post office. I’ve never had this problem with Amazon. But then, Amazon doesn’t use the US Postal Service.

So I shot off an email to the Texas company’s help desk, explaining my situation. Maybe they could get an answer from either the Post Office or UPS, since it was clear I wasn’t going to.

Upon hitting send, I went back to the email tracking number one more time. And noticed, for the first time, an arrow icon at the end of the UPS link. I clicked on it and it took me to a Post Office page with the new PO tracking number and delivery info. My package was still out on the streets, but I was promised delivery by sometime between 6 and 7 that night. In point of fact, it arrived at 5:30, which I learned when I looked at the email one last time later on that night. I’d already found it on my porch at around 6:15. Right after I found the new link I contacted the Texas help desk again and told them never mind, the issue had been resolved but thanks anyway. Always be polite, especially when you’re wrong.

Or maybe I wasn’t. Details are still pretty sketchy. Why didn’t the PO deliver the package the same time as my regular mail? That’s how they handled the other one, the one they mislabeled and sent somewhere else. And how long was that link on my UPS tracking number? Was it there all along and I just didn’t notice, or did it magically appear after I went to the PO in search of my order? I didn’t know about the PO link or what that arrow meant; I’ve never encountered that particular scenario before. Jumping the gun and involving the company was still on my head either way, and I handled it the way I should have: An instantly emailed oops, my bad, never mind, thanks for helping anyway. No finger pointing, just get in and get out. Though I still blame my local post office. Their mishandling of the first package made me paranoid. I’ll never fully trust them again.

I need to watch out for my jump-the-gun tendency in my writing as well. Sometimes my first idea isn’t the best one. It doesn’t help that I don’t always research things before I start writing. You make a lot of mistakes that way, and fixing them can screw up the entire story. It’s okay to write a first draft in a rush to get all the ideas down, but after that it pays to slow down, check over things and make sure it all makes sense. That’s what drafts are for. Better a slower draft process and a smoother, more accurate book than a ton of reviews calling your baby a “carelessly-written piece of crap.” People are going to do that anyway, but you can cut down on the amount. See y’all next week.