Attila the Hun - frustrated author

People wonder why Attila the Hun maimed, killed, raped, pillaged and conquered – and otherwise displayed fairly pronounced anti-social tendencies.

Frankly, I don’t know why it is a mystery. The real reason is that Attila was a writer, rather like myself, and he only went berserk because some of his work – the definitive war novel according to legend – went missing. How, where and why, he did not know, but it made him mad to see his creativity vanish into the ether; and so Rome had to go.

And it did. He was a man of his word and frankly a little obsessive. But such is creativity! What can you say! When us writers lose words we think it is entirely natural to lay waste to the known universe. Writing is hard, you know, and it is a terrible thing to have to write the same thing twice. In that context, laying waste to the odd empire, plus a little bit of ravishing, seems a reasonable reaction.

I mention all this because I lost a large chunk of work over the weekend (writing about attending the admirable Lieutenant Colonel George Krivo’s retirement award ceremony in the Pentagon) thanks to failing to understand the intricacies of my blogging software. Naively I thought that if one hit ‘Control S’ one’s work would be saved. Silly old me. Blogger.com (owned by Google) has its own arcane rules.

I am breaking out the Ouija board. Attila will know what to do.