To help you prepare, I’ve typed up some things you might find useful.  It also gives me something to write about until November 1, when I’m allowed to start my story.  First things first: Software.  You might think you need characters and a plot and some inspiration first, but ask yourself what good all of that will do you if you have nothing to write it on?  None, that’s what.  (Unless you’re into dictation, but what you do in the privacy of your own home is none of my business…)  So, software.

Unless you’re a Luddite (and if you are, you’re probably not reading this), you’re probably going to be recording your brilliant writings on some kind of technological wonder.  For me, it’s a MacBook.  Therefore (and because it’s my blog), I’m going to start with Mac writing software.

First, let’s look at what the MacOS already gives you:

Text edit is a very basic, no frills rich text editor that performs extremely basic formatting functions. Not much to say about it, honestly.  As with most RTEs, Text Edit allows you to specify italics, bold text, various fonts, a few different styles, etc.  Simple and effective for the non-picky writer on a budget.

AbiWord (OS X)

AbiWord is cross-platform, so bonus for you Windows users who were lamenting my lack of love for your platform.  AbiWord for Mac is no longer supported/updated, but it’s a decent early Word clone and fairly stable.  I’ve tested it in 10.3 - 10.5.5 and no problems so far.

There are other office suites as well if what you’re looking for is a simple wordprocessing program — MS Office, NeoOffice, OpenOffice, Notes or GoogleDocs for that matter.  But what about programs geared toward writers?  Well, there are a few I like but there since they tend to be small developers, fewer of them are free.

One that I did some beta testing for back in 2003 is Jer’s Novel Writer.  It was fun then, though a bit buggy, but it’s truly come a long, long way.

Jer’s Novel Writer

Hannah is the name (the real name) of a girl who was very, very close to me.  She had a long and horrible history of sexual, emotional and physical abuse at the hands of those who were supposed to protect her from those very things.  She grew up believing that she had no value beyond her body, that sex is all she was for, all she was meant for or good for.  It was the sum total of the reason for her existence on this planet, to be used at the hands of men or women or whomever.

She doesn’t know how many times she was raped in her life.  It started early and continued most of her life.  She can’t count the number of times she was abused, not only because there were so many but because growing up like that, she wasn’t always sure what constituted abuse.  Was it abuse if it didn’t hurt?  Was it abuse if you were in a bad place at the wrong time?  Was it abuse if you really felt like you didn’t deserve any better?  Hannah didn’t know.

When Hannah was 17, she was raped (again) by a cousin.  She became pregnant.  She was living alone in a strange city with no real friends and no idea what to do.

In that situation, even a lot of hardcore pro-lifers will see that when Hannah, a scared, abused little girl with no faith background and no support system, had an abortion, she was doing what she thought best both for her and for the baby.  She could not imagine carrying a constant reminder of her repeat violation for ten months, adding more of his genes to the universal pool.  She herself had never had anyone love her and she believed that despite what people said, her baby would never know love either.  She didn’t believe herself capable of loving it or of staying sane long enough to find out whether she could.

This girl had no concept of a healthy, mutual relationship.  Hannah could not fathom a man who would want to spend time with her for any reason short of sex.  And two months later, she found herself in a similar situation.  An abusive significant other who often forced her into situations in which she was uncomfortable — though he told her she was “weird” for not liking those situations — had taken advantage of her one too many times.  Hannah never would have called it rape.  She didn’t know she could say no, so how could she know it was rape?  She found herself pregnant again.  No family, no real friends, and only one person to talk to who seemed a little less judgmental. (I regret that that person was not me.)

She had her second abortion.  Emotionally, she was damaged and scarred by so many things, it’s hard to tell how she felt about what had happened.  Years later, she would talk about it and only then did she realize what she had done.  It took her a long time to forgive the girl she’d been and longer still to feel that that decision didn’t just add up to another reason that she was worthless, that she deserved the things that had happened and that continued to happen.

I wish I could tell you that things were happy for Hannah for the rest of her life, but they weren’t.  She had many more hard things to deal with and didn’t have a long existence in which to deal with them.  She did, however, find family in friends who loved her regardless, with whom she could be herself.  She found a God who believed in her and invited her to believe in him and the forgiveness he offered.  She did, at times, find peace.  But I will never look into the eyes of another Hannah and condemn her for the things that happened to her and the things that shaped how she made her choices.

I do not have to condone her choices in order to love her and those like her.  I just have to realize that there, but for the grace of God, would go so many more.

Yes, let’s end abortion.  But let’s do it by ending the things that lead up to it.  Legislation only complicates things.  Let’s stop the abuse, the hurt, the isolation and the shame.  Let’s reach out and give friends and family to those who have none.  Let’s support those who find themselves in this position and positions like it and maybe one day we won’t have to legislate against abortion or many of the other ills of society.

Let us be the face of Christ and the hands of God and let’s strive, daily, for the inbreaking of the kingdom of God in our worlds.  We have too much to do to sit and fling mud at one another.  There’s too much to be done to spend time name calling and questioning each others’ faith and commitment.

All life is sacred.  Even the lives of the broken, damaged and lost.

I’ve never been a big TV watcher.  I just don’t care much for it.  I’d rather read or listen to an audiobook or music or (gasp) have some silence.  My dog?  Not so much.  My dog watches TV.

I don’t mean to say that she’ll stare at what’s on.  I mean she has opinions about it, she has her favorite shows and she gets upset if we skip them in favor of something else.  She has movies she likes and movies she doesn’t.  We watched the debate the other night and the dog earnestly followed along and growled at McCain — and I wish I were making that up, because it’s high maintenance to determine what a non-speaking creature is requesting the channel be changed to.

What’s more, if I leave for the day for any number of reasons, I’ve come back to the main television having been turned on and the channel having been changed.  It perplexed me for a while:  odd stalker?  possessed set?  Nope.  Just an opinionated dog.  More than once, I’ve seen her take the remote from the coffee table, place it on the floor in front of the television and step on it until the channel begins to change.  She’ll continue stepping on the remote until something sparks in her doggy brain and she finds something she wants to watch.  Then she’ll lie down, paws crossed over the remote (guarding it) while she watches her show.

In the evenings, her favorite place is the foot of my bed — if I consent to turn on my bedroom television.  And if she approves of the program.  Her favorite show, a show for which she will come running from another room to see, is Will & Grace.  She doesn’t care much for Grace, but Will is entertaining to her and if she hears Jack’s voice, she (honestly) does a weird little dance before plopping down for her evening of viewing bliss.  Last night, she chose (yes, chose) a chick flick of some sort, grabbed her favorite toy and propped her head up on the foot of the bed to settle in for the next hour or so.  Want a picture?  I thought you might.

Chick flicks and squeaky toys. Life is good.

My dog is a television critic reincarnated.

George W. Bush, Jr. is a very, very bad president. He’s lousy at it, in fact, but that’s not the point. Bush is a lousy president, but he’s a fantastic Viking!

Think about it: in the time of the Vikings, you had the head-of-the-league-boards, MVV (Most Valuable Viking) squads and you had the remedial, “special” raider parties. Bush would have been at the front of the MVV list. He knows, better than any Viking save possibly Eric the infamous Red, the steps of true Vikinging-ing: Pillage before you burn.

People have joked that Bush is hellbent (ha) on bringing forth the Democralypse. I think they’re *almost* right.

In the 8 years that our Own Personal Oil Baronâ„¢ has been Commander-in-Chief, he’s done an amazing number of things that seem woefully wrong-headed if you don’t have the mind of a destroyer. First, the war. He picked a fight with the kid we weren’t quite getting on with at the time. Why? Because the kid said his daddy could beat up Georgie’s daddy (and did, when they tried to blow him up). So when someone egged our fearful leader’s house (using eggs cleverly designed as jet planes), he decided to blame it on the neighborhood bully. Because the way to become the bully is to call out the bully, right? Right. So he blows up some orphans, some sick kids and a few wedding parties and manages to hit some insurgents while he’s at it, but the important thing is that he managed to create more insurgents than he killed. This gives him a retroactive reason for a proactive strike. A clearer example might be this:

You live in an area with hard-to-find grizzly bears and easy-to-find rattle snakes.

A lethal creature of some sort mauls your mother, leaving her decapitated and covered in claw marks.

You, obviously, deduce that she was killed by all those snakes hanging around.

You poke the snake pit with a sharp, pokey stick.

A few rattle snakes rear their heads and bite your ass.

You chop the head off of one or two, ignoring the fact that you’ve stirred up the entire nest because obviously you’ve solved the problem. You chopped the head off the biggest snake (which looks suspiciously like the pet rattler you introduced to this den about 25 years ago…) and the one or two that bit first; the others, now pissed and coming for you, are immaterial. In the meantime, you call your brother in another state to see if he’s heard whether anyone has possibly seen a bear that may or may not have anything to do with the snakes that obviously mauled and decapitated your mom.

See the logic? In the meantime, while he’s out poking snakes, the price of oil goes sky high — which is fantastic if you’re a Texas oil baron, but not much fun if you’re a single parent of three working 2 jobs 16 hours a day while still trying to drive your sprogs to their character-forming extra-curriculars.

Congratulations! Your bombing has set in motion your pillaging. People are so worried about whether Osama bin Hussein Saladdindam is going to kill them in the middle of the night, they won’t notice that you’re robbing them blind. You’ll be fine! Don’t worry about the plebes — just try not to take TreasureBathsâ„¢ in front of the commoners.

Now comes the best part — it’s time to burn.

Here’s the thing: historically, a war has been initially tough on the economy, but sometimes a war can kick a sluggish economy in the butt and get it moving. But if you do it right — which is to say WRONG — you can kick it in the balls instead and get it into a nice, manageable fetal position.

Good job, Mr. President. Damn. Good. Job.

And thank Jesus or your deity of choice for executive branch term limits.

My MacBook has been gently cared for from the time of purchase. It’s never been dropped or slammed or doused in acid. It’s generally resting on an elevated laptop rest (for proper air circulation). Basically, it’s been babied. It surprised me that it would have critical hard drive failure so early in its life, but I keep good backup, so I wasn’t very worried. It went into the shop for a week (it’s a 4 hour round trip to my nearest Apple Store so while the repair was complete in 6, it took time to schedule the time to go get it).

I bought an external hard drive and made a point of backing it up once a week and all was fine . . . until three months later, almost to the day, when the hard drive failed again. This was coupled with the infamous case cracking that is so rampant in this model. This time I shipped it in and had it back within 4 days. I restored my backup and got back to work. At this point, I was frustrated, but still satisfied that AppleCare had been responsive.

Almost exactly 3 months later (noticing a pattern yet?), the top case cracked again. I waited a while, knowing that a cracked case is annoying, but purely cosmetic. Then the MacBook developed some random quirks, so I sent it in to Apple again earlier this month. I received it back Friday.

Quick recap:

4 hard drives

1 heatsink

2 top cases

1 logic board

That seems like a pretty bad stream of events, doesn’t it? Apple informed me that it doesn’t meet their qualifications for a replacement, though — not yet. So I’m left with a computer that has proven itself to be unreliable and AppleCare, for the first time in my Mac using life, being unresponsive and unhelpful.

This is part one of the saga. I’ll be updating, I hope with better news.