03 October 2018

Derailed (Also, Back Up Your Work!)

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I should probably start with some good news! At the time of last month's IWSG post, I'd just finished my Chapter 16 edit. Since then, I've also finished 17, 18, and 19! Weird, right? I really felt like I was on a roll, like I couldn't be stopped....

but then...

Last Wednesday night, I went to turn on my computer. And nothing happened. It wouldn't turn on. Now, my laptop was probably at least 6 years old and the internal battery was useless, but it still worked fine with an adapter. It hadn't shown any signs of anything being wrong with it so I had no idea why it wasn't even turning on. My husband took it to some guys he knows at a computer repair place (that was closing in about a half hour) and they said they'd look at it. 

And so I was derailed. Like, I was a train riding smoothly along the track and suddenly I'm crashing down a cliff. Thursday was my day off and my plans of writing all day went right out the window. And before you say "well, just write by hand" I'll just say I DON'T THINK SO. I always write on the computer AND a huge chunk of dialogue I'd already written for Chapter 20 was on my flash drive. I hadn't printed it yet so I had no way of looking at it. 

I was also in slight panic mode. Most of the time I save my writing directly to my flash drive. Trust me, anything related to Uneven Lines, including all of the nonsense I've written for my two sequel ideas, is safe. I'm not a COMPLETE idiot. I back up my flash drive regularly on my computer, I print out finished chapters. I probably should back it up to some type of cloud thing (I'm super with technology as you can see) since now I'm even more paranoid. My blood, sweat, and tears have literally gone into this and I'll be damned if anything was going to make me lose it all (literally? ok, maybe just the tears). 

It was the other ideas. The shiny stories. Shiny New Story, to be specific. But also a fantasy novel idea that I'd only recently started actually writing instead of just playing scene ideas in my head.  I'd put a lot of work into Scrivener files for those ideas. And I'd never backed them up. They were only on my laptop, which was now in laptop limbo. 

Was it the end of the world? No. I hadn't exactly written pages and pages in these stories. But I'd written some good stuff. I'd done a lot of outlining, too, which I never do. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to rewrite those scenes and have them be as good just from my memory. So I was really kicking myself.

Did it all turn out ok? Mostly! The bad news was that my laptop was officially dead. I was advised not to put any money into it. The good news was that they could save everything from my hard drive. They sold me a used computer that was similar and transferred all of the files onto a folder there. It took me some time to reclaim my Scrivener purchase (because I was definitely not paying $40 for something I already had) and redownload it onto my new computer, but once I did, there they were! My shinies!!! Alive! And not lost! 

So the moral of the story is, BACK UP YOUR DAMN WORK! But I guess my bigger problem now is, I still feel derailed. I lost that drive I had when I was busting through chapter edits. And maybe part of the problem is that my latest chapter isn't actually an edit. It's a brand spankin' new chapter that I've never written before. But I think if the laptop fiasco had never happened, I wouldn't have fallen into this rut so easily. 

But I digress. Back up your work, people!

23 comments:

  1. You had me scared there at first, thinking you might have lost some of your work. Even so, it's still no fun when you're ready to write and life stops you just when you're getting going. Here's hoping you new (used) computer has a muse inside it.

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  2. You'd be surprised at much of your writing you can remember! I hate those kinds of setbacks. Why can't life run smoothly? Then we'd have no conflict. And without any conflict, there'd be no story. :)

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  3. I hate when that kind of thing happens. Hang in there, Sarah!

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  4. I understand your agony -- my computer failed ten months ago. At least the hard drive was salvageable. Even if it took me a while to get a proper replacement... Sigh. It does derail the writing. A lot. Good luck! Happy IWSG day :-)

    Ronel visiting on Insecure Writer's Support Group day: Course Correction

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  5. Oh, no! My worst nightmare is my computer dying on me and my work not being backed-up (which I don't do frequently enough).

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  6. So sorry this happened. Computers can be such a nightmare. I lost work one time that I thought I had backed up and found out when it was too late I hadn't. Now I am obsessed with back ups. I hope you can get back to the momentum you had before this started!

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  7. You'll get back. I know you will. Keep at it! I usually email myself files every so often, then I can access them from anywhere. I like that flash drive idea, except my littles would run off with it, guaranteed.

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  8. That's good news. Usually if a computer dies, the hard drive can be saved. And yes, I back up on an external drive and a second computer.

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  9. I would have been freaking out if that happened to me. I'm glad it all worked out in the end and you didn't lose anything.

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  10. I would've had a heart attack! I'm so glad they were able to save the hard drive. I back up multiple times a day. As a publisher, I don't dare lose all of that stuff.

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  11. The dreaded fear of every writer. This, among other reasons, is why I've transitioned to writing on a cloud. Should something happen, I can get my work from any device, even the public library. Glad they reclaimed your stuff. :)

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  12. I save everything on flash drive. And since I'm a contract writer for my job and work at home, I always save one old computer in case the new one dies. I'm hoping to get a new faster one next fall.

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  13. Ouch! That happened to me once a long time ago. Now I print off my first draft as I finish each chapter. If the worst happens, I have the first draft in hard copy and with the amount of changes I make, it's like having a printed outline.

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  14. I've always paid $99/year to Carbonite and never had a worry. When my computer went belly up (twice) all I had to do was download my files. Now, of course, you have iCloud, but I still love Carbonite, and their help is amazing. They jump right in and help you sort out anything you can't manage on your own.

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  15. Yikes, horror story, but glad the light pierced the dark. I don't even feel safe when I backup to cloud. Lee's Carbonite sounds interesting. I may have to look into that. Happy IWSG Day.

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  16. I'm so glad they were able to salvage your hard drive. That would be an absolute nightmare for me. My significant other got me into using Dropbox, which is like iCloud, I guess. My work is automatically backed up, and I can access it on any device where Dropbox is installed. I have to admit it's been handy.

    Sorry to hear about the lingering (and entirely understandable) derailment. Hope you get back on track soon!

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  17. Oh no! I'm glad your tale had a happy ending and you got your files back. I got a external hard drive thingy (yeah I'm technical too!) so hopefully everything is constantly backed up.

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  18. Here's a hint. Back it up 2 different places. Sometimes your backups fail, too.

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  19. I had this happen to me. Once, I lost everything because my flash drive broke, and my hard drive crashed. It was awful!

    But then again, I learned something from that experience: rewriting is golden.

    My favorite writing teacher told me this, and I thought she was crazy. Rewrite the entire book from scratch--multiple times? Are you insane? But honestly, it works. Now I go through several drafts before I get to the editing phase, and my writing (and story) are so much better for it because I'm not trying to fix things that are unfixable.

    The other thing I learned is to back things up on an external hard drive (I don't like the cloud). They're not that expensive, and they hold a lot. Printing is a great idea, too, if you're a computer-only writer (I won't rant about the usefulness of handwriting, I promise).

    I'm glad you're back to functioning, and that your work has been saved. Keep writing!

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  20. Yep. I've lost work. But I rewrote the material and honestly it was far better than what I lost.

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  21. Geez, louise! Sounds like a heart attack inducing situation there. Glad it worked out, but yeah, I could imagine how the stress would throw a wrench in the gears.

    All of my writing is in Google Drive, since I'm usually working across multiple computers. Dropbox is also another good cloud-sync service.

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  22. I'm so glad you were able to get everything off your hard drive. I had a scare some months ago when a Windows update killed my hard drive. I found that OneDrive had backed up my writing, which was good because they didn't recover much of anything.

    You should check out OneDrive and Drop Box.

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  23. Oh man, that was close! I should definitely back up my laptop more often. For a time I was really good about emailing documents to myself plus backing up onto a separate drive, but I'm back to not doing it quite enough.

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