I Almost Gave Up
Lost 4yrs of work
Writing
I’m not going to go into extreme detail, but I lost four years worth of work in seconds. Everything is gone. I was devastated. Literally in tears. I honestly thought about giving up writing. Is it really worth the years of work and the chance of it being destroyed or lost in seconds?
I walked away from anything related to writing and spent the day distracting myself. I wanted to give myself the time to calm down and think things through without the anger and depression that came with that kind of loss. I had to grieve what I lost and then decide if I wanted to move forward.
I spoke with other author/writing friends on Discord about the whole situation. I bitched and whined and just plain talked it out. It was a wonderful feeling to have others help me troubleshoot everything and figure out what I wanted to do.
This morning I woke with the determination to continue writing. Not like it is possible for me to quit anyway. Writing is a part of me. My brain gets itchy when I don’t write something for more than a few days. So I am currently going to keep going forward. It’s my passion, my life, my obsession.
My Lost Projects
With all the above said, Divine Games is still being worked on. I had made a copy of the file so that I could print it out and forgot that I did that. I am only missing one chapter from where I was. So it is not a total loss. I am so thankful for that.
I do have notes and brain dumps that are handwritten for most of my other projects. Safe Haven, Book four of The Guardian Series, will have to be completely rewritten. Along with three other books I wanted to have published.
Needless to say, I have a LOT of work ahead of me. I am going to concentrate mostly on Divine Games and work on the other projects when I have time.
Back Up You’re Stuff On Something Separate
As a final reminder. BACK UP EVERYTHING. In multiple places. I recently learned that a fellow author emails her work to herself each time she makes a change to it. I have started to do that.
I am also going to be putting my stuff on an external hard drive. I don’t want the chance of losing four years worth of work again.
I also am going to print out each draft and finish product. This way I have a paper copy of EVERYTHING.
I hope you all have a beautiful week friends. I will see you next time.
Yeah I have one manuscript, which I call the cursed project. It is called this because it was the first novel series I started to work on. It's two decades later and I still haven't finished it.
Because I have lost it THREE [BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP] times.
The last time I worked on it, I also lost a quarter of my progress on that draft because Scrivener didn't save properly.
Needless to say, I know the feeling. I'm glad you found most of your work, though!
I've been there, man. Lost part of my work once and asked a nerdy friend for help. He just goes "Sorry, Mike, no backup, no mercy". Tough lesson. Hang in there and keep writing.