I finally had one of those 'it will never happen to me' moments in my writing career. I lost the last chapters in a short story I thought I had finished!
I'm having my in-house editor trash my latest short story 'Etchings'. She's been brutal and honest. Damn. ;-) Hopefully, I'll learn how apostrophes work some day. Nah, probably not.
Anyway, we're at the end of the story and it's gone! The climax I worked on for days, while chomping on a salad at my favorite Gazebo Burger in Frisco, is GONE! What the hell!
It's my fault of course. I should have been backing up my work to a thumb drive. I have one my key chain just for this sort of thing. But hey, I hit 'Save' every few minutes while I'm working so why bother? Right.
I don't know what I did wrong. Maybe I hit the wrong buttons while I thought I was saving. Maybe I shut the lid on my new notebook Win8 and ran the battery down. I just don't know. It doesn't really matter, somehow I messed up.
The lesson here is to backup your work often. NOT 'save' often, you should do that of course. BACKUP often. To a thumb drive. To the cloud. To a CD. To a USB drive. Print it out. Whatever works for you. Just do it.
Now I have to hope I can recreate the excitement I had in that original finish. I think I can remember most of it, but frankly I'm not sure.
Sigh.
Don't let this happen to you.
BACKUP!
No comments:
Post a Comment