Writing Angst

[przed]

So, yesterday I go to give the final polish to a new scene in a story I've been working on. The scene's nearly done, but I want to make sure the last few paragraphs are just right.

I open the file. And the new scene's not there.

The version of the file is the old one. The pre-new-scene one. Every version I have on back up is minus the new scene. The new scene is gone, vanished, disappeared. Apparently when I was cleaning up my hard drive last week, and in particular updating all the files for the story cycle of which this story is a part, I must have deleted the wrong, freakin' file. To say that I am distraught would be understating the case.

I have to write the damn thing over again.

Fortunately, I have the opening of the scene in my notebook. Unfortunately, I spent a day adding to and improving upon the scene once I transcribed it to the computer. I discovered things about the scene in the writing that I remember in broad sweeping strokes, but I can't for the life of me remember the exact phrasing and it's killing me.

Oh, well. I didn't lose the whole story. And I didn't lose the whole cycle. But I now know a wee bit of the craziness that T.E. Lawrence must have gone through when he lost the entire first draft of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom in a railway car.

Comments

[cruisedirector]

{{hugs}} I did this once, with my one Mission: Impossible story. If it's any consolation, it took hours of reconstruction but I liked the rewritten version much better.

You're in good company

[stormheller.livejournal.com]

When we were putting together Duet, 2 different wonderful authors lost stories--one had to go back to an earlier version and one had to start from scratch. These were sane, reasonable adults, one of whom is a computer professional.

This kind of thing scares me to death. I'm so lazy and writing is so hard. I back up compulsively. *Every time* I add a little more, I email it to my hotmail box, load it up into the file section of a private yahoogroup, put it onto a floppy, copy it to Mr. Grumpy's computer at home, keep a floppy in a drawer at work in case the internet goes away *and* the house burns down... Obsessive you say?

Feel free to email your stuff to me. I'll stick it in a folder and never look at it until you say so. In fact, I already have a folder called "PRZed". ;-)

~ Stormy

[przed.livejournal.com]

I've got the scene half-done and it's going well, but there's always that niggling doubt that the other version was better.

I've done this once before in grad school. The night before I was supposed to be delivering a paper in a seminar, my computer hiccuped and took the whole file out. I was up till 5 a.m. trying to reproduce the darn thing and then had to be up at 8 to teach a class. So, really, I supposed this time isn't that bad. Still frustrating, though.

Re: You're in good company

[przed.livejournal.com]

After I discovered the disaster, I created a "Drafts" folder on my web space and uploaded all the UNCLE stories I'm working on. And I'm seriously considering using my safety deposit box for all my backup disks, vids included.

I once lost an entire essay in grad school the day before it was due and swore I'd never let that happen again. Clearly, I didn't learn my lesson well enough.

[sooguy.livejournal.com]

Wow, that really bites. I don't even take half the precautions you and your friends mention. I think I will start. The worse that's happened to me is losing a scene on paper that I felt was perfect and held me up until I found it again several weeks later. Oddly enough after rediscovering it I realized wasn't that great of a scene and I could have rewritten it from memory without losing too much detail.

Okay I think I am going to go and back up some things I am working on.

[przed.livejournal.com]

Do back ups! Do back ups now!