I’m like most other people. I like to eat.

I wouldn’t call myself a gourmet. I don’t need to indulge myself with haute cuisine. I have to say that all those cooking shows, with their complicated techniques and even more complicated presentations, leave me cold. I just want something simple and hearty. Something that fills me up while also making my taste buds tingle.

Of course, food is not the only thing I consume. As someone who considers themselves to be something of a man of letters, I also consume words. I love to read, and from a broad range of sources. I’ll read books or newspapers or magazines. I’ll surf the internet, and I’m even the sort of person who carefully reads the advertisements on the walls of trains.

Of course, just like my consumption of food, my consumption of words has its limits. I won’t read from absolutely anything. I could probably say that my choice of words is pretty similar to my choice of food. In both cases, I’m not really into things that are too fiddly or too complicated. But I also don’t want to fill myself up on words that are bland or generic. I want to read something that’s simple and hearty, but with a bit of tang to it.

But I’m not just a reader of words. I’m also a producer of words. I suppose you could call me a literary chef. And the great thing about being a chef is that I’m not just cooking for myself. While I do aim to produce words that I would be happy to eat, I have broader aims than just feeding myself. There’s a great big public out there and I’d love them to be consuming my words as well – and hopefully enjoying them as much as I do.

You would think, with this goal of generating a broad readership for my words, that I wouldn’t be too fussy about exactly who eats my words. While that’s generally true, there are some exceptions. I’m not talking about people. I definitely want as many people as possible to be consuming my words. I’m talking about my computer.

Yes, you heard me right. I hate it when my computer eats my words. It did it just a few days ago. I was making great progress on chapter 4 of my new novel. But when I sat down for another writing session, what did I find? All the words from the previous writing session had disappeared. The computer had eaten my words.

I’m not sure how it happened. I try to be diligent when making backups. Unfortunately, when I checked my backups, I discovered the words were gone from there as well. All very peculiar, and even more frustrating. I was going to have to completely rewrite that section. At least it only removed the words from the one previous writing session, and not any more than that.

So that’s where I’ll end things for today. I love eating, both food and words. And I love it when other people consume my words. But I don’t love it when the computer eats my words.