I mentioned yesterday why you should back up. Sure, I was able to recover my files but every single one of them was corrupted. It’s horrifying, really.
I’d spent about four hours or so tweaking and doing final line edits of my novella. I also rewrote the synopsis. I had it all ready for submission to my editor when I pulled the stupid and deleted the files. I mean, I was logging into my machine to do just that when the files got deleted and corrupted.
Luckily for me, my husband had a recent version he emailed me. Also lucky for me I had printed out the synopsis and handwritten markup so I, at least, had that.
So I spent a good portion of time preparing the document again for final submission. That meant I had to read all 50+ pages (thank goodness it was one of my shorter works and not my mammoth novel) from start to finish. I seem to be comma happy so I had to delete all the unnecessary commas as per the publisher’s style guide. I’m trying to be a better author and have a super clean submission. I’m anal that way. 😀
Anyway, after spending approximately another four hours on the novella I finally got it ready for submission again. I had this annoying habit through where I started sentences with “Instead”. Instead of what? WTF was I thinking when I wrote that? It made no sense whatsoever. I’m so glad I read through it again and got rid of all that “instead” stuff. Another word I used a lot was “only”. Only this and only that and only whatever. Only there are too many onlys! Ack! I do recall editing a bunch of those out the first time I did line edits so having to do it all again was certainly painful.
Such is life.
I also had to retype the synopsis. It’s never as good the second time around. I feel like the first one I’d written was perfect and this one was meh. But it has to be short – only 800 words – and I kept it within that so maybe it’s not so bad after all.
I thought I’d lost the blurb too but I managed to find that in an old email sitting around in my Gmail. Thank god for small miracles. So I tweaked the blurb. I think I’m finally ready to submit.
I’m totally cured of not backing up. Swear. I’ve already backed up this latest version. As god is my witness, I shall never forget to back up again.
I’m super anal about backing up! Had the Great Computer Crash of ’10 and never, never, never missed a back-up again! Oh, no, I email to myself, I save on the laptop, on at least 1 USB–and that’s while I’m working! After writing for the day I always transfer to the desktop. Just in case.
Super anal, yeah.
At least you managed to get everything done! Think of it this way, it could have been worse. 🙂
I will be anal from now on that’s for sure. I got lucky this time. There won’t be a next time. 🙂
What a scary incident! I’m glad you were able to recover and I’m willing to bet the meh synopsis is banging awesome 🙂 I read a tip the other day from an attorney who was speaking toward proving you really owned the manuscript you wrote and the system he has. It seems like it could be helpful in this situation, too: Create a GMAIL account strictly for your documents and when you create them or have them totally finished, email yourself a copy and leave it in your inbox. This gives the document a (hopefully) hacker-proof date and time stamp of creation.
I personally use DROPBOX for all of my documents but since my desktop just crashed on me, I’m thinking I should also invest in some good backing up of all my computers. You just never know about technology.
That’s a great idea, Jen! I may try that
I will be your witness. 🙂