Storymoja Blog – Learning from Yesterday
January 11th, 2010 | Published in News, Reading
We are back! I hope all of you enjoyed the holidays. For most of you it is back to the grind of being alive, in Kenya, with responsibilities. Truth be told, no matter what challenges we face, we love being alive, in Kenya, with our responsibilities. Sure things could get better, we could wake up one day and find that we no longer have corrupt political leaders and hypocritical religious leaders. What a thought! What would do then?!
Country Road
Someone said a few days ago, or maybe it was said in an Episode of Boston Legal, no idea: ‘The experiences that we live through, good and bad, are what make us. Positive reinforcements follow the actions that we made at just the right moment. Mistakes, bad experiences forewarn us, and remain as landmarks that remind us which paths not to follow.’ Sure, life is like that country village, fresh, full of resources, not quite comfortable, full of possibilities, it might get muddy once in a while, and some paths might lead you tumbling fast downhill, others will take you to the top of the hill where you can look down on God’s Beautiful Country.
That said, I would like to share with you an excerpt from Moira Allen’s article on Writing-world.com
Back Up Your Work!
Every writer knows how important it is to back up files of your “work in progress.” But how often do we actually do it? (I say “we,” because I’ve realized that I have gotten lazy and complacent about making frequent backups.) I’ve found that the easiest way to remind myself of what needs to be backed up at the end of the day, or the end of the week, is to keep two separate “backup” folders/directories on my hard drive. One folder is titled “Daily Backup,” and is for those files that get changed as often as every day, such as my spreadsheets that track business expenses and income. At the end of the day, before shutting down my computer, I make a copy of each file that I’ve worked with and drag it to the backup folder.
The second folder is titled “One-Time Backup.” This folder is for items that are unique — i.e., that don’t get changed every day. When I write a new article or column, it goes into this folder. If I download an article of interest from the Web, it might go here.
About once a week I use a flash storage drive or “data stick” to copy the two backup folders.
Back Up Your old Work!
It’s easy to see the need to back up your work in progress: The last thing you want is to lose the work you’ve done on that article that is due in a week, or half the novel that you’ve been sweating over for the past year. But it’s also a good idea to back up your older work. If you haven’t made a backup copy of older articles, stories, or whatever, consider doing so, even though you may not think that you’ll ever “need” them again. If something happens to your hard drive, that work could be gone forever. This is especially true of anything that you’ve written but haven’t published.
You can also back up work that you created before you had a computer. Read the rest of the article here.
And now to this week’s reading:
We begin with Sandra Mushi’s India: India did make me laugh – I arrived at the hospital, almost eighteen hours later, tired and hungry. I got there just in time for lunch, very tired and hungry; I see a nicely bound menu. Si you know how us waswahili love our foods.
Gideon Chumo offers us the concluding part of hiss piece that was published here last years. Mortifying Lisa(2): Phew! Finally, it comes around—this mortifying escapades and playing blackjack with scandal matriarchs and devious angels. Blinded by the sparkles of the star, the young…You can read Part One here if you wish to –> Mortifying Lisa (1)
It seems that Paul Kariuki has vowed to duel to the death. So he draws his sword and… Juliet Maruru ran up the hill. He charges and asks: Who needs my Kind of Fame? He insists that the lady hiking her skirt up running all the way up the hill inspired this one, too. The lady should just have pulled out her fan and swooned to a faint at his feet :p
Perhaps that is why we have a sad story coming up. *sob* Perhaps it has nothing to do with previous events. Dead Lovers by Peter Nena: “This is where they buried her,” Anna said to me, pointing at the ruined grave…
And what do we have here?! Could it be that Juliet Maruru has found a sword and is charging back to defend her honor? I think perhaps it is a gun with a silver bullet instead! Don’t blush now. Tampon Taboos by Juliet Maruru.
Please continue sending your ideas about how to make your weekly reading more fun toblogs@storymojaafrica.co.ke. And remember, all stories published on the Storymoja Blog will be eligible for the Crown of Story of the Week. The stories are posted every Monday. Please critique and vote for the story you believe should wear the crown. At the end of the week, the votes will be tallied and the story with the most votes will posted on the Storymoja Website as the Story of the Week on the Friday of the same week.
To have your story in this weekly process please send it toblogs@storymojaafrica.co.ke before Friday at 4pm.
Have a wonderful and creative week!
