How often do you accidentally delete your work

[Emotional]

So here I am in the zone, typing away, it is going really good.

And then somehow you hit the wrong button and the last hours work is gone?

Yeah, the bourbon may have had something to do with it but FUCK!!!!!!!

At least the autosave didn't make me lose everything.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Not here, as I use google docs, but work documents...

 

[Candy_Kane54]

I've accidentally deleted a SQL database on a production system for an international corporation but I've never lost a story I was working on ... so far

 

[NotWise]

Once, I think. I had a neo-western Romance named "The Wolves of Winter" that I ground to a stop on after ~20+K words. Now I can't find it.

 

[Emotional]

Once, I think. I had a neo-western Romance named "The Wolves of Winter" that I ground to a stop on after ~20+K words. Now I can't find it.

I cant imagine that kind of pain.

Thankfully I only lost about 1000 words.

 

[Bramblethorn]

So here I am in the zone, typing away, it is going really good.

And then somehow you hit the wrong button and the last hours work is gone?

Yeah, the bourbon may have had something to do with it but FUCK!!!!!!!

At least the autosave didn't make me lose everything.

Ctrl-Z is your friend.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Never lost any stories, yet...

I've lost a few epic forum posts due to having to reload the page to post and getting my Ctrl+Cs and Ctrl+Vs mixed up

 

[ElectricBlue]

Not since 1988. Since then, when I stop to think, I automatically hit Save.

 

[tenyari]

A line or two here and there. I can't recall any more major losses.

That noted I keep multiple backups on different drives, and zipped up on cloud storage.

There are many cases where I've written whole volumes of work in my head and then failed to write them down before I lost them. I'm a lucid dreamer so I often write stories, songs, and music in my dreams - and a good many of those will fade out within hours. Always with the music since I forgot how to write music down in my late teens.

So if we're allowing for lost work because it didn't get recorded properly to start with - that's a never ending frustration for me.

 

[SimonDoom]

It hasn't happened to a story in a while, because I'm diligent about auto-saving and backing up now. But I recall working on some stories before I published anything at Literotica for the first time, and I lost everything in a hard drive crash. Had to start from scratch. Nude Day Running Adventure is the one I can recall in particular like that.

 

[Carnevil9]

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be offensive, but given all the modern technologies available, you would have to be a total moron to let that happen to you. Just take all the elementary precautions and use the software as it is intended to be used, and it will never be a problem.

 

[Voboy]

...never?

 

[Bubo_bubo]

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be offensive, but given all the modern technologies available, you would have to be a total moron to let that happen to you. Just take all the elementary precautions and use the software as it is intended to be used, and it will never be a problem.

Sometimes you're so much in the zone and going with the flow, that all you can think about is hammering away at those keys. Maybe that is moronic. Autosave can be a help admittedly (and usually is enough that I've never lost lots of work).

 

[JuanaSalsa]

The only time I have this problem is at work where there's a standard template I have to download from the internet and instead of saving in the downloads folder or prompting you to save it somewhere, it autosaves in the temporary folder and if you forget to resave it somewhere else before closing it, everything you wrote disappears and can never be regained. Just clicking the save buttons or having autosave set up doesn't help, nooo... That would be too easy. No, you have to first, wait for Microsoft to decide that the stupid form isn't a threat, then click on the button to allow you to save it, then go into file and save it to where you want it.

Gah! And the IT people are like, noooo, we can't just set it up to autosave somewhere that doesn't autodelete. Like wtf not?

On the positive side, I guess, this only happens like once a year when I'm in a super rush to get the fucking thing filled out and therefore forget to properly complete the process. On the negative side, I'm in a fucking hurry and don't have time to redo an hour or more of work!

Whew, thank you for providing this space to rant about this very irritating work thing.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Hah. For my work in principle all documents have to be put on Sharepoint/OneDrive, which saves your work almost instantaneously. But it can be a problem when the internet gets fucked up. And that's not entirely unusual here.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be offensive, but given all the modern technologies available, you would have to be a total moron to let that happen to you. Just take all the elementary precautions and use the software as it is intended to be used, and it will never be a problem.

Claiming not to mean offense while calling them a total moron...
Quite an oxymoron dontcha think?

I've definitely used modern tech as intended only to get bit in the ass. Ever "sync" something to the cloud and come back to find only vapor?

 

[oggbashan]

Never except for about 50 words. I tend to save after every paragraph.

But - My first erotic story, started on a 360k two-floppy drive IBM XT and transferred to an AT with a hard drive? I got to about 100,000 words and then decided on a major rewrite which was worse than the original.

I wanted to go back to the original and start again but it was filed on a 360k floppy which had become corrupted.

It could never have been a Lit story because it started with detailed descriptions of the sexual abuse the hero had suffered as a child and went on to rehabilitate himself in his community.

But I miss it.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Nope. I have them saved in about four different places, 2 on hard drives in my system, 1 on a 64gig flash drive and another on my tablet.

I have accidently hit a key combination on my keyboard and delete several poignant posts. And as the ctrl key is just under the fat part of my hand, left edge, I may have had it pressed as I was pressing another key combination that delete everything.

 

[SimonDoom]

I can't speak for everyone, but I think most of us are morons from time to time, so name-calling is a bit of a low blow when it comes to this sort of thing. I've managed to avoid losing stories in recent years, thanks to finally adopting, after learning the hard way, moderately careful habits, but it's happened in the past, and I've experienced countless strange glitches with computing devices in which I've lost information or had to go through maddening spells and desires to tear my hair out while trying to recover things. Most of the time, I've been successful, but only after intense frustration and panicky moments. I imagine many of us know what it's like to want to throw objects at walls while sitting through long sessions with user support.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Once, yes, one time, I accidentally deleted all my work on a computer. Most of my work was backed up, but some of the stories I hadn't. Once, and only once, a computer crashed (early on), and I had nothing backed up. After those little accidents, I learned my lesson. I have online backups and email a family member a copy for them to save somewhere.

 

[Beholders_Eye]

Ctrl-Z is your friend.

Did you mean Ctrl-C?

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Did you mean Ctrl-C?

I don't think so. Ctrl-Z is "Undo", so if you do accidentally delete something, that can help.
It's more of a problem if your Word or other programme crashes/locks up and you cannot perform any actions and must hope that the autosave has saved most of the work you did.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Did you mean Ctrl-C?

No.

 

[Beholders_Eye]

No.

OK, apologies. I thought you might have been referring to ctrl-c to copy the work to the clipboard; I see what you mean now. Good point

 

[Lovecraft_Lore]

I have half written stories, story concepts, I have a 12,000 word half written tale for that Mickey Spillane event. I have them somewhere on a disk and saved to a drive.