Double, Triple Save Your Work: A Warning to All Writers

Yesterday was a rough day.

An unfortunate event completely sucker punched me in the gut.

But maybe I’m being over dramatic. Here’s what happened.

I went to open the word doc. on my laptop, the one with my work-in-progress novel in it. This was on WordPad, in case you’re wondering. And I opened it, and it was blank.

And I mean blank.

Look at this horror.

And for the record, it was only this file that looked like this. My most important file is freaking gone. But my old college essays are still there. I don’t understand.

I panicked. As sad as it sounds, I’ve been on and off crying for about a day. I’m trying to assess the damage, and what I lost as I’m writing this. From what I can tell, I lost about 4-5 scenes, probably more. I wrote a lot in the past month, and was making great headway with my fiction writing. I got the ball rolling, and now, it feels like a huge step back. I didn’t think to double save recently. In hindsight, I should have. I thought clicking that save button was enough. Guess not.

At least there is a bright side to this tragedy. I have a slightly older copy of my story saved somewhere else, last updated about a month ago. It’s missing a bunch of new material, but it’s something. Thankfully, I did not lose everything. But, I did lose quite a bit of work, and I’m actually heartbroken.

So, here are my options as of right now.

1. My tech wizard of a boyfriend manages to magically recover the lost data/file.
2. I try and recreate about a month’s worth of writing.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hopefully, It can be saved. If not, well, I’ll have to work around this setback. I’ll try and bounce back from this, but honestly, I do feel depressed about it. I’m going to curl up in a sad, cozy corner and eat copious amount of food. And think about what I can salvage.

I will keep you guys posted if a miracle happens. If any of you have any suggestions, I’ll try anything, let me know in the comments. And if you guys have ever lost unsaved work, how did you handle it?

Listen, I don’t wish the loss of work on anybody, especially writers who put there hearts into every word. It’s a frustrating and devastating experience. Please, to everyone who reads my tiny blog, make sure your writing is safe. Double save, even triple save, your work. Use multiple accounts and files, also USB drives, whatever keeps your stuff safe.

I’ll keep you guys posted if anything changes. Cross your fingers and toes.

But remember what I said about triple saving your projects.

Write with Heart,

Lady Jabberwocky