I hate hate hate losing things. I mean I hate it. Whenever I lose something it makes me just want to throw down my pen and scream. I just lost some stuff that I spent about two hours working on (mind you I was half-watching tv at the time but still) and it's driving me insane. I had a folder that had two critiques and a marked up copy of the first chapter of my WIP and I had rewritten a decent chunk of it and was fairly happy with it. Now I can't find that stupid folder it just disappeared and it's driving me insane. Does this happen to other people out there and is it as frustrating for you? I mean if I lose three thousand words sometimes I won't write for a couple of weeks because I don't want to go on without it because there are always little things that I like to build on and I don't like having holes in my story. Argh, at least it was only editing and not actual story, that's even worse.
Jon
Posted by ambongan (Member # 2122) on :
Been there.
For that reason, I keep my writings in the same folder and have the Word program save automatically every 5 minutes. I also date every draft and every day I work on it gets saved seperatly. It creates lots of redundencies and uses disk space, but if I lose something, it is never 3000 words.
Posted by Balthasar (Member # 5399) on :
I've had my computer lock up on me after writing 10 pages. Luckily I have it automatically save every couple of mintues, so everything was recovered.
As for your other problem--loosing stuff--have you tried buying a cheap, two-drawer file cabinet? I'm not an unorganized person by nature, but the filing cabinet helps me keep everything together.
Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :
3000 words? That's nothing. I once lost everything. Not just that story, but every piece of fiction on my computer. I suffered a mental breakdown, then, where elves and sprites were telling me that my stories had gone on to better places, and were playing with St. Peter in the sky.
Okay, not really. But it still sucked.
Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :
I think every writer loses something in his life. Hemmingway lost most of his young work on a train. A teacher stole the first thing I ever wrote. (I shouldn't say stole, I gave it to her but it's still long gone.) More recently I lost the Storyline to my Constant WIP. I put it somewhere safe so it wouldn't get lost but I don't know where that place is. (But it must be filled with all sorts of wonders.)
Posted by SamiJo (Member # 2124) on :
I'm completley paranoid about loosing something I write. That's why I save it to my computer, make a back-up disk, and print out a copy to put in my files.
When I would write things out on paper, I would always loose them, so I know how it feels. But I just tell myself it was fate (it was not human error dangit!) and try to move on.
Posted by Balthasar (Member # 5399) on :
Sometimes I wonder if the best thing that can happen to a writer is if they loose everything they've ever written. I'm certainly not advocating deleting everything you've written, but there's something to be said about having a fresh start, with nothing behind save experience. Loosing everything is certainly the ultimate fresh start.
Posted by babylonfreek (Member # 2097) on :
Now that's a horrible thing to envision. With three novels in the works, ideas for five more, and dozens of shorts... if I lost it it wouldn't be a "fresh start" it would be depression central. In fact it is my single greatest fear. I usually run a double hard drive, several floppy disks, hardcopies, burned CD's and file sharing on a friend's computer.
It's not because you say I'm paranoid that THEY aren't out to get me.
Posted by Gen (Member # 1868) on :
I always do print-out every ten pages or so, plus offsite backups as attachments on external servers, multiple computers, and burned CDs.
Once, on a bus, I lost two hours of my life watching the movie Duplex. It was painful for many reasons, but [SPOILER WARNING] worst among them was watching the laptop with the only copy of the MC's book on it get crunched. I spent five minutes sitting there, torn between the vicarious freak-out and wondering how big of an idiot he was for not printing the damned thing earlier.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
Yeah, it can be a bummer when you look for something you wrote and can't find it. For me it isn't the time lost, it's the fact that if I've lost it, I can't enjoy reading it again.
Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :
Gnomes. Blame it on the gnomes. They're responsible for such things disappearing.
Gremlins, too, the little goits!
Posted by PE_Sharp (Member # 1654) on :
Sure I lost the first half, to two-thirds of my first novel, and am still torured by the fact.
3000 words, forgive me while I snicker.
PE Sharp.
Posted by wetwilly (Member # 1818) on :
Do Gnomes steal other things, too, HSO? Because my DVDs of the third season of "Rurouni Kenshin" AND my "Serial Experiments: Lain" DVDs recently disappeared. If it was those stupid gnomes, I'm going to punt them so hard.
Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :
Yep. Gnomes are solely responsible for those disappearances.
Wear steel-toes... Gnomes have notoriously bony bottoms.