Apr 7, 2010

Pulling Out My Hair

Have you ever lost a large portion of your WIP--either because of computer failure or your own stupidity? I have. And it sucks! Today I decided I was sick of what I've been currently working on and I opened an old WIP only to discover half of it was missing. AH! I searched through every single back-up file and email sent with pieces of it only to discover I did in fact delete half of a document---like an idiot.

SO for today I am not working on anything. I'm just mourning that loss.

13 comments:

Amanda said...

Oh no! I have done that before and it's terrible! I feel your pain. :(

Nicole Settle said...

ooh bummer! I can get pretty anal about saving for that very reason...*off to go save WIP for the tenth time today*

Morgan said...

I completely know how you feel. I had just started writing a book and got to about ten pages (which probably doesn't compare to how much you lost) but I saved it and then I went back to it and it was gone! I was so angry because I thought those were excellent pages, probably the best writing I've done. All day I was in a bad mood.

But then I got over it and realized it happened for a reason, which made me feel better. I hope u feel better too!

Anonymous said...

Poor you! I think we've all done it once or in my case, three times. I finally learned to back up on a flash drive, cut and paste to a special email, and print out a copy. All of this before closing my work out.

I don't blame you for just walking away. I think I did that for a month. I was so sick that I cried. That last one was a chunk of a manuscript and it wasn't garbage either. I'd spent lots of time rewriting. So, I feel your pain also. I feel it deeply. Give yourself time to get over it too. This isn't one of those "oh well..." things. Losing work is a BIG DEAL! It is to me.

Stephanie said...

GAH. That's been my nightmare all this time writing (I'm new here, just happened upon your blog today and I love it!). I used to only ever just hit the save button, but with this project, I hit the save button, email myself a copy and save it to a jump drive. Just in case.

Mourn for your missing work, then jump back in- my motto is "The only way through it is THROUGH IT." Missing stuff happens to the best of us! :)

Swimmer said...

I'm sorry... there isn't any way you can recover it? That just stinks!! I'll wear black tommorow in honor of your old WIP!

Charmaine Clancy said...

I know that horrible feeling, when I was doing NaNoWriMo I took my laptop to a cafe and opened it to find the document blank - after over 40,000 words. I couldn't breathe. Fortunately for me it all worked out and my husband found the file. But I couldn't even speak until it was back on my screen. I'm sorry for your loss and hope the rewrite turns out even better. :-(

Stina said...

Once, but it was only my outline. Now I back up frequently (flash card and email). Good thing I do since my last computer died and the files on the hard drive couldn't be saved.

Sarah Ahiers said...

i hate when that happens. Which is why i use dropbox. Never had a problem since

sarah darlington said...

Falen-- what's dropbox?

Tara Martin said...

I've had that problem before, and it's such a horrible feeling. I've had two hard drives crash on me. Thankfully the second time it happened they were able to restore a lot of my data-but not all of it. I use mozy.com as my back-up. I do a back-up each day. I also use Google Docs as a secondary back-up.

Editor Cassandra said...

Oh no! What a bummer! I have a flash drive that I do nothing but save copies of my stuff to. Then I also email copies to myself and star and archive them in gmail. I'm so super paranoid of that happening to me too!

porcelaine said...

OMG, I'm cringing at the thought! I'm so sorry this happened. Your comments are an important reminder to backup and then some! I like the idea of dropbox as well, it's always good to have several options.