Among some of the worst things that can happen to a writer has to be the theft of a computer. I, unfortunately, was the victim of such a theft on Monday.
Later, I may write about the emotional impact of having my laptop stolen, how I had taken my hard drive space for granted, and how I feel like an utter moron for not having established a backup routine for my data. That may come later.
It occurred to me this morning, though, that the laptop lid bore a rather large sticker advertising this very blog, and that the thief might in fact decide to come visit in order to revel in some anonymous fame, paradoxical though the concept is.
So this morning, I address this blog post to the person who made off with my laptop from the library a little before 2:00 on Monday.
Keep the laptop. The hardware means nothing to me. A glorified typewriter is all it really is.
But the data on that computer is irreplaceable. I'm a writer, and the literally hundreds of thousands of words held in hundreds of files on that hard drive represent not only my past but my future. It holds, among other things, almost 40,000 words of one unfinished novel as well as sketches and outlines and preliminary scenes of four or five other possible novels. It holds short stories, essays, and blog posts both finished and unfinished. It holds my life's work.
Those words are very important to me.
So please, person who took my laptop, if you have any decency in you, and if you haven't wiped it clean yet, please pop out the computer's hard drive and drop it into the book return slot at the library where you found the computer. You can get an inexpensive hard drive online or at Best Buy or somewhere and still have a decent laptop for super-cheap to use for whatever you want, and I will have the product of hundreds of hours of creative work returned to me.
Please, just the hard drive. The rest is yours.