Accidentally destroying your writing

[Former Member]

So the otherday i got right into writing from where i left off. I was getting really into it and really thinking about what i was writing and how it was going to affect my 2 characters. I even tried fixing things from before that really didnt make sense to me and never will. Anyways as i was writing i finally found a way to make Leopold work for me and not be this nice guy then instant jack ass. And Matteo was finally stop being this cry cry cry person. HEll i even found a place like a real place for Edmund (thankfully this was only about 11 pages written) Because sadly i only had it named Document. Then later i was working on something fast and i clicked save and that saved as document. Then i realized that i just overwrote my short story. Now i have named it Starting Over which seems like such a fitting title. I wrote this 1 scene that was so cool and just everything worked. And the sad part is i dont remember most of it. Im so glad i made a file called Ideas and had those ideas written in that file. So i can work with them.

 

I was just wondering if anyone has ever accidentally destroyed there work. How did you destroy it? How much work did you destroy? Was it better to have lost it because you had a new fresh start? Or were you completly lost and couldnt work with these characters agian? And any tips on how i can avoid making these mistakes.

[corvus]

Dang, 11 pages is a lot to lose. I don't think it's ever happened to me that I've accidentally deleted a lot of my work, but sometimes I've had to decide not to use stuff I'd written. That's totally different, though, and much less angsty.

 

If you find someone who's particularly technologically proficient (i.e. not me), there might be a way to recover your lost file.

 

Good luck!

[YaP]

Well, working with computers for almost 20 years now.. yes, i lost work, e.g. because of crashed programs (which happened quite often in the earlier years). Thats how i learned to save my work in progress on a regular basis.. not only when i finished working on a file..

Actually most editors do have a "auto save" feature, so its a good idea to switch that on. Well, and setting a proper filename right after starting a new file (by saving it to the proper location right away) avoids overwriting by accident...

What really helps avoiding data loss is organizing your work, regular hitting the save button, and regular backups. I think most convenient is to have an external HD drive for backups - thats fast and reliable.

I keep a 1:1 copy of my drive besides the data backup, and sync that like once a month - just in case the drive does crash (which does happen !), so i only need to exchange the hard drive and have a running system without having to re-install the OS and all the applications i need.. but thats mainly to save time as i earn my money with those computers and don't want to spend a day installing stuff if i can avoid it.. hard drives are cheap enough nowadays

 

Actually, overwriting a file is one of the things where you usually can't recover the work, because the chances that the data on the disk is really overwritten are rather high...

 

So it really is mainly organizing your work and being disciplined with the backup... then you shouldn't lose data - or in the worst case (system crash) at least not much (if you keep your backups up to date (

[Graeme]

I've lost data, too, but never that much.

 

I always start by naming a new file and then editing it. I never write a story without first giving it a new file name. The file name is typically the title of the story, but if I can't think of a good title, I just pick a temporary one and change the name of the file later.

 

How did I lose some work? Well... I work on two to three different machines in different locations (eg. one at home and my work laptop which I'll take with me when I'm on a business trip and do some writing in the hotel room), and use a USB drive to transfer stories between them. A couple of times, I've made changes to a story, but didn't save it to the USB drive. I then worked on the story on the other computer, copied it to the USB drive, which I then copied back down to the first computer, overwriting what was there.... It hasn't happened often, but it's happened. I've never lost huge amounts, though, and I've just re-written the scene I lost. I can't say if the rewritten scene is better or worse than the original, though, because the original is gone....

[rec]

If you're using Microsoft Word, the default file name is not Document.doc. It's DocumentX.doc, where the X is a number. So check to see if you might have your original document as Document1.doc, Document2.doc, etc.--assuming you're using Word.

 

It's an outside chance.

[Lugh]

dood

 

I lost like EVERYTHING I had on disk AND paper in a fire. Total meltdown no chance of recovery. Since then I have been anal about back-up to the point that I use an offsite service. It's hard, but I have been able to get back into some of the characters / stories... but some were lost. Forever.

 

That said... make a folder where you save your stories. Open the processor and immediately save it to that folder (with a name / number / date / something unique). Make that habit. Soon you won't be loosing things in the same manner.

 

Good Luck

[FrenchCanadian]

It actually happened to me, losing some work twice. Most recently, I had lost all my data from my blog and my website (the original one on my computer),

 

but more to the subject, I once lost about a page worth of text on a story that I was working on, I had closed the file without saving, or something like that. I was lucky enough to remember well enough what I had written, to simply re-do it.

 

Ironically enough, I'll say that the re-write turned out to be better than the original one. Maybe because it had been worked on even more,,,

 

Now for me it's not much of a problem, with my time machine on mac,, meaning that with my "LaCie" external drive, it backs up everything that changed over the last hour. Therefore, if I loose something,, I got it not far away.

[Hylas]

Yes. Though, in my case it was a month's work on a 3d model. I overwrote the correct progress copy of my work with an older one. I really wanted to cry that day LOL. You can imagine the month I spent working on it (and it was the part I hated doing most in 3d modeling), only to lose it.

 

I've stopped working on it for the time being and just moved on to other things. Seeing it just makes me want to punch myself for my stupidity, LOL.

[shadowgod]

Autosave isnt always the saving grace it claims to be. When i was working on LiS my computer shut down for an update and took the bulk of the chapter away with it. I had Autosave (allow quick saves and background saves) running, and it did nothing. The document recovery didnt even work. Had the computer locked up Doc recovery would have kicked in, but seeing as it was a microshaft forced restart, lost.

 

I was not pleased

[colinian]

I have an 8 GB USB flash drive and I copy everything to it using a backup program called JumpBack. It only copies the new and changed stuff, and keeps X number of backups (1, 2, or 3 which you can set as the default, I use 3) by adding a 3-digit number to the end of the file name. It then deletes the 4th oldest copy etc. When it gets to 999 it wraps back to 001. I run JumpBack every time I'm going to leave the dorm; it takes about 1 minute to back up all the new stuff in My Documents (which is all I back up). I carry this flash drive in my backpack or my pocket when I'm away from the dorm. This drive cost around $65 when I bought it about a year ago, but I've seen similar 8 GB flash drives advertised for under $50, but whether they come with backup software like JumpBack I don't know.

 

I also have a 500 GB LaCie USB external hard drive that I backup to using Retrospect backup software. I use it for backing up my laptop and Doug's, Chris's, and Steve's. That stays in our dorm room. All of our data is encrypted, so if it was stolen the data wouldn't do anyone any good. This drive cost $149 from Amazon.

 

Colin

Who's paranoid and knows there's a good reason to be that way!

[Graeme]

Colin

Who's paranoid and knows there's a good reason to be that way!

There's a thing called justifiable paranoia, and anyone who's worked with computers a lot knows exactly what I mean....

[YaP]

There's a thing called justifiable paranoia, and anyone who's worked with computers a lot knows exactly what I mean....

 

lol, yes, i agree

[Former Member]

I read alot of Laurell K Hamiltons Anita Blake series & Anita always says "Paronia makes you live longer" or things like that. And this chick has to be paraniod when she has every bad ass vampire chasing after her Another one of her sayings is "Ignorance is Bliss" Or another 1 is something about "Im not paranoid i think practical" LOL. I really like alot of your suggestions and will DEFINATLY follow threw with them like storing my stuff to my email. Or getting a flashdrive. I'll store it on to that like everytime i save send it away lol. And name things that are the title or something. Not Document or Untitled. I use Microsoft word and the otherday i was using just plain boring notepad because it was faster to load. LOL. Another suggestion i thought of is working with a typewriter OH how i used to love working on such a ancient and primitive piece of technology. BUT then if theres a fire or something then those papers are gone. LOL and i cant store them on the web. LOL so that suggestion backfired lol. Sometimes i will write things in my journal to later type out on my computer for like story ideas and stuff. I find just sitting and actually writing helps instead of click click click on the keys. It just sucks when you have to type out everything you already written.

[Graeme]

Another trick that I've used occasionally is to store things on the internet There are secure places where you can store documents. In my case, I've sometimes retrieved something by going to my webmail "sent" folder and downloading the document that I'd emailed to my editors/betareaders/hosting webmasters. Someone suggested one of the Yahoo! features to me once (I think it was something like Briefcase or similar) as a place to store things. It means you can only work on a file while you're online, but it means it's stored in a reasonable safe place. I'd still keep a local copy, too (I don't trust web sites that much), but it's another option.

[S.L. Lewis]

Paranoia is a good thing. I have one story called "The Moons Journey" that I'm conteplating on turning into a complete book and I had 9 chapters written and I was working on editing them. I lost them all when my hard drive crashed. I wasn't even able to save it to my flash drive. Which really, really sucked. Because they were so good.

Now...I have to hunt down, through my hundreds of note books that I've tossed around my room in various piles, for the one note book with those handwritten chapters. So I know how you feel.

[Empathy]

My story A Cursed Life as it is now, is actually the result of me losing the first chapter due to a computer crash. I was unable to recover the data and about nine pages of the story had been lost. Up until then I had never had any intention of really posting my stories online or even creating such a large story. It was just the urge to create this story that had been swimmin in my head for so long. Once the orginal version was lost it was months before i started writing again. And it was only then that i started to re-exam the story, writing it for a second time lead me to a new starting point, new characters and a new love for the story. I destroyed my writing but in the end it was a good thing.