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Monday 16 February 2009

Lesson still not learned

I spent some time on Saturday going through completed chapters of the novel I'm posting on Critique Circle at the moment, doing a bit of general tidying up. Then on Sunday I got into writing the next chapter. It was going pretty well. I sat with my laptop on my knee happily typing away, enjoying the peace and quiet while my kids played and Annie the pup lay asleep under my chair.

Then suddenly my laptop became heavy and almost slipped off my knee. It took me a while (as I frantically grabbed at it) to realise that in fact Annie was not asleep and she'd just made a lovely discovery - the ribbon I have tied to my thumb drive to stop myself losing it. It made a marvellous tug-o-war for the few seconds it took her to pull hard enough to bend the drive!

A broken thumb drive shouldn't be the end of the world, should it? I mean everyone uses a thumb drive to back up their work, so there's always a copy on the computer, right? Everyone with a brain does, but not me. I'd opened my chapters and reviewed them straight from the thumb drive - I didn't think to save them onto the laptop as well. I wrote the new chapter straight onto the thumb drive with no copy. Don't bother to give me any similes for 'idiot', I've already used them all on myself.

The really embarrassing thing is that it's not so long since I lost everything once before with no back-up. How can anyone be so stupid? My only consolation is that all the other files are on the laptop or on the main computer, so they're not lost.

As for Annie, she just keeps looking at me with those big brown eyes as if to say, "Well, you really should have known better than to let something dangle with me around."

5 comments:

Angela Ackerman said...

Oh goodness--I'm so sorry. Hopefully you didn't lose very much.

This is actually one thing I love about CC--once you put your work up, you will always be able to access it. Even when work is archived, it is still accessible. It's like having an online back up of your work, and you can revise online, too. :-)

Brenda said...

And the fun begins...grin...

I hope you didn't lose too much...a few years back, Koda took a bite out of the cord to my laptop...everything went black on the screen and I lost a whole PB story...I had not saved any of it and by the time I made sure Koda was okay (he got a little shock when he bit down)...I completely forgot what I had written and the idea along with it...but like Annie...his big brown eyes got him out of trouble...grin..

Anonymous said...

Oh noooo! How very frustrating! I write a bit myself. A couple of years ago my computer got a virus which wiped out about everything on it. All my work was gone. Luckily I had paper copies of most of it. I feel for ya.
Warm Regards,
Melanie

Rena Jones said...

I've been having computer problems too, so I share your pain. Sometimes it makes you just want to chuck it all out the window.

C.R. Evers said...

ohhh noooo! (((hugs))) Stuff like that happens to me all the time, so I KNOW your pain.

more ((((hugs)))))