The Ax Murderer Returns

Or is it 'axe' murderer? I got a lot of enthusiastic and varied responses after last week's writing clinic. My attempt to convince my college class that I was a serial killer brought some great feedback (and thanks to John, who lived through the entire thing with me and helped me remember some of the more shadowy details... )

But in some of the reader comments, I realized I had used one spelling of the word 'ax', while some of you guys spelled it 'axe'. I always believed that both were correct, but being the grammatical nerd that I am, I just had to look it up:

• "Axe": is the traditional spelling and is used in most regions outside of North America. 

• "Ax": is a more informal variant, particularly common in American English. 

So it looks like those of you who wrote to me spelling it 'axe', are not from North America and need to be deported immediately!

Sorry, couldn't resist...

On the "Advice from Irv" front, we almost had a disaster a couple of blogs ago...I was about two-thirds through my Outlaws story when the website began one of its 'I'm going to reboot now without any warning' modes. Now usually, this isn't a big deal; this website we're on now does a good job of saving what I write every few seconds, so when it refreshes, everything immediately pops back in.

Except this time it didn't. When the website came back up, the page was blank!

You must know the feeling--I am going to guess that it's happened to everyone at least once. That stomach-flipping, sweat-inducing feeling that what you just spent the last four hours on has disappeared forever and can never be replicated. I mean, yeah, you can sit down and start again, but you know you'll never be able to recall all the perfect phrasing and detailed descriptions the second time around. You feel like picking up the entire PC and chucking it out the window.

Which I almost did.

EXCEPT--as irresponsible as I usually am, I learned long ago to protect my work. Soooo, every time I get up from writing something, I copy the entire text and paste it into a Word Pad that I have minimized on my screen. So, did I do that this time?

Yes, I did. I have no idea what I would have done without that copy. As I stated more than once, that was a tough blog for me to write in the first place, considering how dumb I felt after the whole experience. Not sure I had it in me to write it again. I might have junked the whole idea and started something else. But everything turned out okay. and you guys got to read a good story about me falling on my face trying to break a middling band's single.

The moral? Copy, paste, and save everything you write, every time you get up from your computer!

But you probably knew that already...

I do have a couple quick stories to pass along next week, but I'm looking ahead and wondering 'what's next?'. So I'll turn to you---should I expand this blog to include some of my personal opinions and pet peeves? (If you know me at all, you are aware I do have many opinions!) I often discourse on things like movies, women, and how truly terrible all entertainment in the '80's was.

Should I start discussing things like this? I would invite any and all comments and rebuttals from you guys of course, if I do decide to go in that direction. So drop me a line and let me know if you'd have any interest in my going this route.

If not, I'll just make up some cool stories and pass them along as factual.

Kind of like the news media does.

Uh-oh. Looks like I started already...

IG