8 thoughts on “Reader Friday: Superstitions

  1. I’m not superstitious, but I am paranoid, mostly about losing my work. So, the ritual I perform is to make multiple copies of my work each day. When I’m done for the day (or sometimes I do this multiple times a day, depending on how much I’ve accomplished), I make a copy of the manuscript. Then I rename the copy using the following naming convention:

    – YYYY MM DD HHHH

    Where is the title, is the stage I’m in (d=draft; e=edit; f=final), and the rest is the date and time. So, if I’m working on the manuscript Best Novel Ever, my convention would be:

    Best Novel Ever – d2017 10 13 0803

    (Name; it’s in draft stage; and I’m saving it on October 13, 2017 at 8:03 AM)

    Then I save the file to multiple places (local USB stick, Microsoft OneDrive, DropBox, and my own storage server).

    Disk space is cheap, and doing it this way helps keep me from deleting something one day that I might need the next.

    • Ditto about the superstition—fear, actually—about losing any day’s work. Sometimes I even want to preserve previous versions of a sentence or phrase. I have a habit of pasting odd bits of writing at the end of a working draft, and I email a copy of each day’s draft to myself to avoid losing it.

      In other parts of life, I have something of the Irish fear of “invoking the devil”, as it’s called. I shy away from speaking about negative outcomes, for fear of making them come true. It’s actually an irritating superstition, one I’m trying to overcome. ?

      • Ditto ditto. I lost three chapters once becuz I foolishly didn’t back up and an almost new Dell died on me. I still don’t “back-up” every day BUT every day, when I am done, I email the newest version of the WIP to myself and my sister.

  2. I’m what you might call ‘anti-superstitious’. My mother is very superstitious. She believes all these little superstitions about everything from the weather to what colour you wear at funerals (supposedly, if you wear green to a funeral, it means someone else will soon die.) So I’ve always rebelled against these superstitions. I Friday the 13th is a lucky day, black cats are wonderful, and don’t walk under a ladder if you don’t want paint in your hair.

    Regarding writing? Nah, no rituals. Although coffee helps. And chocolate.

  3. I’m not superstitious. But that may be because I live with four leprechauns and a troll, and evil spirits won’t come near my house due to the magical arrangement of the flower pots at the front and the gargoyles at the corners of my roof. So there is no need for superstition here.

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