late night writing

[sweetnpetite]

I was writing this story last night, but forgot to save as I went along. I had to lay down with the baby, and I fell asleep and was too tired to do anything but shut the computer down, so I lost the whole thing

It was just a stroke story, but still- and I had several pages and was really going places with it.

At least when you write on paper, your automatically 'saved'

Sadly yours,

 

[damppanties]

Awww sweet, that's so sad.

I lost a 5 chapter story once and I was in the last chapter too. It seems like it was my best, but that may be because I lost it. I still miss it but am too lazy to sit down and rewrite. Sometime, maybe.

 

[catalina_francisco]

You have my empathy. It is so difficult to accept, and seems draining to think of trying to recreate such things. I have lost things before and was recently discussing with Master the idea of having an external type backup. I also have a specific email account which I try and save my writing to now so if the worse happens, I still can retrieve my work.

Catalina

 

[sweetnpetite]

What's that external type backup thing and how do I get it???

Thanks.

You have my empathy. It is so difficult to accept, and seems draining to think of trying to recreate such things. I have lost things before and was recently discussing with Master the idea of having an external type backup. I also have a specific email account which I try and save my writing to now so if the worse happens, I still can retrieve my work.

Catalina

 

[dirtylover]

re

Yeah - computer's can be incredibly annoying, I lost most of my dissertaion when at uni, when my computer decided to go on fire.

Has your work autosaved maybe? I think word does that sometimes.

 

[catalina_francisco]

What's that external type backup thing and how do I get it???

Thanks.

Is an external hard drive which can be connected to your existing one, but if the PC crashes, your work is saved. There are also some programmes which will automatically save your work at intervals, so if anything goes wrong you only lose a small section, usually a paragraph or two. That was invalueable while I was going through university and trying to complete masses of assignments.

Catalina

 

[Boxlicker101]

I save periodically and if I try to exit, the computer will ask me if I want to save changes to the file. Once in a while it will delete, for no discernible reason, several paragraphs. About all I can do about is curse and threaten to thow the computer into the junk, which doesn't help much but does provide some satisfaction.

I believe computers are the enemies or humanity and only pretend to be friendly or helpful to lull us into accepting them.

 

[Guest]

Sweet, you have my sympathies.

I have Word set up to do an autosave every ten minutes. I'm also in the habit of hitting "save" at the end of every paragraph, or so. I'm paranoid about losing my stuff, and do saves and backups all over the place. I even upload all of my work (including work in progress) to a secure part of my webspace. That way, if my HD completely dies on me, with no way to recover the data, it's there, on the webserver.

Lou

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Nothing is worse than losing your work, especially when you have had a good flow of thoughts going, it hard to get that back with the same passion as before.
I tend to write everything down on paper first, then I can go back and decipher my hand writing and then make changes as I type.
I have this thing about power in writing things with my own hand before I release it to the computer, it's like saving love letters in a way.
Sorry you had to lose yours, sweets. Hope you can recapture what you lost.

~A~

 

[Spurious Scribe]

Don't you just hate it when this happens? How many times have I gotten bitten because I was too involved in getting it down and have seen it disappear behind the blue screen of death or into blackness when the power blinked momentarily.

Usually, I have to fight to make myself rewrite what I have just lost. And almost always the story loses something in the process and I am not nearly as happy with it then.

I have a male acquaintance who has posted several stories here on Lit. He had this happen to him just the other day. He wrote a rather long piece that he had intended to send me, only to lose it somehow. He rewrote it, emailed it to me, decided that he had left out some things that he considered important to the story, so he wrote it a THIRD time. Talk about dedication!

Possible suggestions:

1. Invest in a UPS (uninterruptible power supply).
2. Set up your word processor to periodically do an automatic save.
3. Work at habitually savng your work manually also.

And yet in spite of your best efforts, when you least expect it... s**t happens! <sigh>

 

[Alex De Kok]

I have two hard drives, and I use the 'Scheduled Task' facility in Windoze to copy my work to t'other drive on a regular basis.

Paranoid? Me? You betcha.

Alex