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Monday, May 23, 2011

Missing!

I had a scare the other day.  I opened up the folder containing all my documents for Far From the Sea, and it was gone!  The other documents were still there but the main manuscript was missing.  No I didn't scream or yell or cry.  I was too stunned.  My jaw was in my lap and I kept reading the titles over and over thinking it had to be there.  It wasn't.

Since I received my netbook I have been using ZumoDrive (It's like drop box) so I can access my work from both the desktop and the netbook.  When I could breath again I ran downstairs and checked on my netbook.  It was there and I could access it just fine. For some reason after doing that it worked fine on my desktop too.  I think it got hung up the last time I used it on the laptop and ZumoDrive thought the document was still open and so wouldn't let me access it other places.  That's a guess.   

The thing is I have several back up copies.  I keep a copy on my desktop, one on a thumb drive and every now and again I email it to myself.  It had been a couple weeks since I had updated the backups but I still wouldn't have lost too much.  Even if it had been gone it wouldn't have been devastating.  Still, when I saw it wasn't there I was heartbroken.  I stared at the computer in confusion, I could hear my brain telling me "you have backups for this reason"  but my heart was weeping blood at the loss of my baby.  I thought I was ready to let my MS out in the world and that I would be tough enough to take the criticism and rejection it would receive.  After this little demonstration of how much this WIP means to me I may need to toughen myself up a little. 

Have you ever lost a manuscript?  How do you backup to prevent fatalities? 

6 comments:

  1. Oh, jeez - I'd have had a heart attack.

    I have lost my earliest works due to computer crashes. Considering I wrote them from the time I was 10-13ish, I don't think the world will miss them overmuch. [g]

    I use dropbox for now, and in my more lucid moments I do think to back up to flash drive too.

    So strange -- but very glad you recovered your work! Phew.

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  2. Sorry about your earlier work. Even if you didn't have any plans for them it's fun to go back and see your writing evolution.

    I'm a big fan of backups having lost too many school projects/papers so remember that flash drive!

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  3. I'd have a heart attack, too. Right now it's on a disk beside me on the desk. I just might have to look into dropbox.

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  4. I've liked having ZumoDrive. Other than the time detailed above, of course. I saw you did a post on backing up too. Good timing.

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  5. Eek! Like you, I wouldn't panic too much - I email the MS back and forth every night that I work on it, but still. I had this happen when I tried using LiquidStoryBinder; I wasn't familiar with how it saved files and thought I'd lost *everything* of Austin's story that I'd entered into the software. I joined the Yahoo LSB group, asked my question and felt like such a dunce when some helpful folks pointed out where my files had gone [g]

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  6. You don't have to loose much to teach you to keep backups. I'm glad Austin wasn't gone.

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