For two straight days I’ve worked to make major changes to my sequel to Mayhem at the Happy Valley Motor Inn and Resort. Like a good little author, I always save my changes to a thumb drive in addition to saving to my original document.
But when I opened the document this afternoon, the file had none of the changes I’d made and neither did the one I’d saved on the thumb drive. My head is spinning. I’m not sure what happened or how I lost about 3,000 words. And worse yet, apparently I had the auto save function turned off.
Oh, and now, my document wants to put about five lines of empty space between paragraphs. Any Mac experts out there to help me fix this particular issue?
I’m about to cry. Seriously. Sigh. Back to the drawing board.
Damn.
Praying for Eyebrowz 
Oh Leslie xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx That’s awful. I was away to say, it’s not there maybe under a very similar name…like perhaps you’ve hit another key in saving and now the title has an extra letter. BUT if you saved to thumb drive, then that is unlikely. I don’t have a mac or I’d maybe be able to advise re the paragraph biz but there’s usually a way on any wp package to format the line spacing.
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I think I solved that problem. Wish I could find those 3,000 words, though! Oh well. It could be worse. I might’ve lost the whole thing.
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You know once my PC totally crashed and went kaput. I was 60 thou words in on the Viking and the Courtesan and the guy in the repair shop didn’t know if he could find ANYTHING. I wanted to chuck up on the floor honestly. He was days about sorting it all and he’s very good. But he got everything eventually. So I know how you feel. What I do now, is every so often I attach the copy to an email and save it in drafts. I’ve seen people lose their entire manuscript. It is soul destroying. Losing any bit you’ve done is. Espesh where you’ve sorte d a bit. Often like that, espesh when I telescope, that is take say three bits, chaps whatever and knock them into one far shorted piece by maybe scooting forward and then having one of the leads think about why they are now where they are–I save that file under another name in case I can’t do it and it is a disaster. THEN I go a good bit ahead and open the damned old file and work on. Maybe I do several chapters before realising. It is all the joys of writing.
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Oh, losing 60,000 words might’ve driven me over a cliff! I’m certainly going to take more precautions in the future.
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You learn.. You learn to do all sorts of back ups. AND to search everywhere.
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I still think it might be in my computer somewhere. My husband will be home this afternoon and I’ll get him to look even though I’ve already started repairing the story.
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My reckoning is it will be. It’s not just humans who put things in the wrong places you know. Hopefully Studly will find it. Truly.
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Fingers crossed.
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You’re writing on an App that’s saving to the iCloud right?
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Apparently I had auto save turned off. I looked everywhere for the file. All I could find was the original without my most recent, and extensive, revisions.
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Damn…so sorry
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Thanks. I’ll survive. I might develop an ulcer, but I’ll live to write another day.
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wish I could help…writing any thing of consequence, I always check a second device before I close out an app ….which begs the question, why didn’t you just minimize the app you were working in
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I don’t know. I thought I did what I always do. Save the document on WP, then save to the thumb drive and voila! But I must’ve done something wrong. My husband’s out of town, and he’s much more computer savvy than I am. Hoping when he gets home he can find it for me. In the meantime, I stopped frequently and sent it to myself in an email. I’m so paranoid now that I immediately open the attachment to make sure it saved correctly.
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wonder why it didn’t save to the thumb drive, and you first draft in WP? Interesting. Again, so sorry….can’t wait to read the Mayhem sequel
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Thanks. Hoping for a better day tomorrow!
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I hope you had a good cry. You deserved it. I’m so sorry. I had one of those computer made it disappear moments today right when my daughter called. Poor thing got an earful. I hope you get some answers and help. Good luck. Don’t dream of giant erasers.
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Thanks! Giant erasers—giggling now.
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Sos very darn it
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Darn it is what I said.
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🙂
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Oh, that is awful! I want to say that you can officially call yourself an author now as that seems to be something that needs to happen at least once in your process, but it still really sucks!
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Apparently it is a rite of passage. Thanks!
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I’m sorry. Tech sucks!
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It sure does. But I can’t divorce it. I guess I’m co-dependent.
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😉
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😪 how horrible…
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Thanks. I finally have made up for all the lost words, but it took me longer than it did the first time I wrote them, and they just don’t feel as right for the story. I’ll do better in the future!
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What a frustrating situation for you though…
If you are like me, you will keep going back and tweaking until it comes out at 💯%
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That seems to be the way we work! 😊
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That’s my worst nightmare. When I’m in the throes of writing, I am so paranoid I hit “save” regularly and keep an updated copy of the novel-in-progress to gmail as well as Dropbox…just in case!
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While I was writing my first novel I emailed my WIP to myself every day. Not sure why I stopped doing that, but I’ve begun again.
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