I’ve learned how memory can save your butt if you’re a writer, the hard way. Whether it’s a compact flash card or a full-on flash drive, it’s important to back up your work as a writer, and the more ways you have it backed up, the better.

I learned this when I lost 100-plus pages of a manuscript (among a lot of other vital stuff) when my PC’s hard drive failed last winter. It took me nearly six months to get energized to dig back into the project, and only now am I clicking away again.

So it’s vital; let my tale be the cautionary one that advised you to back up everything you care about – especially your writing projects!

Sometimes it feels like you almost have to know your characters better than you know your spouse, to be a successful writer. While I love my wife, I can’t say I know all her habits backward and forward. That isn’t essential in a marriage; but to write a novel, you have to know if your female lead uses eye cream or not before bed – something you may not want to be aware of with a spouse.

It’s odd and it feels almost like neglecting your spouse, to know your characters so well. But then, that’s just another good reason to always make sure that I take my wife out once a week on our date night. After all, you can’t snuggle up to a warm character at night… so it’s good to keep those priorities in line.

I want to create a ghost who’s touchable. That the goal with my latest project. I’m tired of the old conventions that insist a ghost passes through everything and is mere mist. What’s scary about mist? A ghost who is touchable, however, has more impact. You don’t even know you’re being haunted until it’s far too late.

While it may not be as technical as a manual on installing Delta fauctes, believe it or not in the supernatural mystery world, people really care about “the rules” of the supernatural world. However, my job as a novelist is to tell a compelling mystery and you just can’t have that with the stereotypical ghosts found in so many novels.

Mine will be different.

I’m finally making progress again on my first Pizza Delivery Mystery novel, Thirty Minutes Or Less. Longtime readers will remember I lost over 100 surplus pages of manuscript during a hard drive crash in which I had no data backup. It’s been a long road toward working up the energy to tackle the novel afresh, but I finally have.

I’ve taken my wife’s advice and found a whole new approach to the plot, jumping ahead in the novel’s timeline after the prologue so that I can get my main character to the action, the novel’s main premise, and all of the important characters that much faster. I am envisioning about a third of the novel taking place in a sort of “frame/flashback” structure before the plot catches up to current action and unreels from there.

This new approach makes me feel more confident about the novel than I did the first time through; by getting to the important stuff earlier, the elements that I believe will hook readers are there early on. That is what will make this novel stand out.

Lately I’ve been putting in a lot of long nights but not getting any creative writing done, even though the engines are turning up in the ol’ creative noggin. It’s frustrating that I’ve spent more time pondering the best acne treatment lately than I have a character’s motivation for murder despite being innocent.

So I guess the key to all this is simply making time and re-prioritizing my life. That would get most of the roadblocks out of the way.