Okay, it wasn’t the dog. It was the computer.
I had today’s post all neatly outlined yesterday when the computer crashed. Now, I’m in the situation of having to come up with a post, get a shower, and get myself in the car to pick my kids up from school on an early release date – all in a half an hour.
So, instead of the original, high quality, organized post that I had outlined yesterday – you’re getting this one that I pulled from my head.
It’s sort of a blogger cheat sheet for times like this. Use it sparingly, or it will spoil the soup.
Five Things To Post When You Don’t Have Anything Else to PostÂ
1. A poll. (Thanks to Eliza’s recommendation at I’m not just a mom … I’m a Home Mom I’ve started to use polldaddy for my polls. It seems to work well with WordPress.)
2. A photo. A picture is worth a thousand words.
3. A cartoon. Thanks to ProBlogger for pointing me to this free resource for cartoons. (The downside is: it’s been on ProBlogger. Now everybody will be using these cartoons.)
4. A blogthing. The blogthings site has a host of illustrated quizzes specifically for displaying on blogs. If you’ve ever wondered what your leprechaun name is, this site may be for you.
5. Link love. Post a list of links to recent articles from five of your favorite bloggers.
Now, who’s going to ‘fess up? Don’t tell me that this has never happened to you.
Contents (c) Copyright 2007, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved
17 responses so far ↓
1 homemom3 // Oct 12, 2007 at
I hate when it eats my posts. Glad you could use the polls. 🙂 Have a GREAT weekend!
2 Jeanne Dininni // Oct 12, 2007 at
Hi, Laura!
So sorry to hear about your lost post! This has happened to me–and believe me, I wasn’t happy about it! It happened during my early days at Orble, before they updated and improved their software.
After completing an entire post–one that I’d spent quite a bit of time organizing and writing–I clicked “Create Post” and, suffice it to say, the software didn’t. My post was lost somewhere deep in cyberspace! I reproduced it from memory; yet the quality of the “copy” was nowhere near that of the original.
Another time, I was in the middle of writing an involved post which required a lot of research, so I was opening, closing, and minimizing tabs, as well as MS-Word. Most of us have experienced getting into that mode where we begin clicking somewhat mindlessly, from rote. Well, without thinking, I just happened to click the “X” that closed the tab in which I was creating my post and so lost everything I’d been working on. These days I try to be more careful about that!
So, you see, I can definitely sympathize with you–and bravo that you had another idea waiting in the wings to take the place of the lost post! Also, if you did all that in half-an-hour, I really applaud you!
Jeanne
3 Laura // Oct 12, 2007 at
Hi Jeanne!
Actually it took a very rushed 15 minutes to write the post and I was late picking the kids anyway.
(But, I had been thinking about the idea for a while – so it was just a matter of putting it into words.)
4 Laura // Oct 12, 2007 at
Hi Homemom3,
The polls are VERY useful!
5 Rach (Heart of Rachel) // Oct 12, 2007 at
Sorry about your lost post. You came up with a good line up of alternative posts. I like posting photos because they can convey more than words can say.
Happy weekend!
6 Robyn // Oct 12, 2007 at
Hi Laura, we all have times when we lack a good idea or that we have something significant to say to others.
Why now ask, just before you go to sleep, “What happened in the last week that made a difference and how might I share that well with others?” When you sleep on a question, you give your brain a chance to work on it while you’re completely at rest. Then see what happens when you awake. No doubt, you’ll have just what you need and will not have to use the things that all the others are using. You’ll be able to be different!
7 Harrison McLeod // Oct 13, 2007 at
Nothing is more frustrating than having a post eaten by the comp. Most of the time I’ll attempt to recreate what I had just written, all the while trying to convince myself the words I lost haven’t really been lost, they came from somewhere and they’re still there.
Yeah, right. The end result is my inner voice saying “Nice try, Harry.” The second post never comes out as good as the first. Next time I’ll try a picture and call it a day.
8 Vivienne Quek // Oct 14, 2007 at
Had the same experience once … lost my post just when I finished writing the conclusion. Now I click “save and continue” all the time.
9 Misti Sandefur // Oct 15, 2007 at
Oh yes, this has happened to me as well, but mine wasn’t a blog post, it was a disc full of articles!
It was back before CDs — back when some of us still used Floppy Discs. I had put a bunch of articles on a disc and later inserted the disc into my computer to edit the articles. Low and behold, they were gone and the disc was empty! I tried and tried to figure out what went wrong and get them back, but had no success.
I remembered what some of the articles were about and re-wrote them, but I still lost quite a few that I couldn’t remember. And of course, I didn’t remember the words I had written before. This is when I started backing things up on paper, too. 😉 Just a quick printout from the printer will save a world of frustration. 🙂
10 Courtney - Web Writing Info // Oct 15, 2007 at
I love this post! It’s just what I need this week. Now I know how all you writers are managing to do your work and blog at the same time!
11 Laura // Oct 15, 2007 at
Wow! I’m glad you guys enjoyed this quick post I put together. (Of course, maybe I shouldn’t have divulged my secrets …)
Yvonne – I was happy to link to the cafe!
Rach – I do think that posting photos can be effective for many blogs. Finding the right picture could be a trick, though.
Hi Robyn! Thanks for the advice!
Harrison McLeod, Vivienne Quek,Misti Sandefur
Thanks for sharing your experiences. At least I know that I’m not the only one to go through this.
Courtney! Shhh… It’s a trade secret.
12 Matt Keegan // Oct 17, 2007 at
Ugh! It has happened to me as well.
To avoid this problem, I develop all of my longer posts in Wordpad and save them as I go along. I add in most of my HTML mark up, so all I have to do once done is cut and paste into the blog post and I’m done.
Naturally, I proof what I wrote and make sure it looks good on the blog before I put the post to bed.
Hey, for a thirty minute post you gave us a lot of good information!
13 Laura // Oct 17, 2007 at
Thanks Matt!
Of course, every time I use one of those techniques for a post you readers will know what I’m doing…
14 Joanna Young // Oct 19, 2007 at
Hi Laura – sorry it’s taken me so long to get here! Yes, Typepad has eaten my posts before (bad typepad) – I try and save as a I go along, sometimes I write in word then drop it in so I’ve an original to go back to – but then you get all the hassle of cleaning out the formating…
What about the other way round? Have you ever posted things that you didn’t mean to?
Joanna
15 Laura // Oct 23, 2007 at
Hi Joanna!
The only time I posted something I didn’t mean to (that I can remember) is when I was learning to use the advance posting feature in WordPress. I didn’t get it quite right, and something that I wanted published on a certain date was published immediately instead.
16 James Lee // Dec 3, 2007 at
I have to admit that it’s happened to me before. I’d like to say I try to save as I go, but who ever does it all the time.
I had Firefox crash on me when doing a lengthly blog post one time, so unless it’s a quickie…I do it in an editor and save every so often.
17 Terry Heath // Dec 17, 2007 at
Hi Laura,
Great ideas, I’ll have to bookmark this page as a reference . . . either that or commit it to memory. BTW, I’m honored to be the link in you “of” for technique #5. Thank you!
Terry