I think this all happened to us at some point. The worst part is when you're positive you lost some killer dialogue or narration. It's easy to rewrite the scenes, so hard to remember the little bits you liked. Once I lost over three hundred pages. It wasn't gold but it was a good founding base for my story. Today, for #Savegoatbro2015, I realized I lost about 20 pages. It held: a really good sex scene, an eloquent enough fall from grace, and a good sense of losing MC's path. It's easy to write it all back in but I feel like the spark isn't as good as it was... Anyone else hate when they magically lose work they swear they saved and uploaded to their USBs/Clouds/Whatevers?
I lost some a long time ago. Now, between my USB and the fact that I have four separate computers linked via Dropbox and always syncing, I haven't lost anything for a long time (crosses fingers).
I lost about 30,000 words of a historical fiction novel to a virus that wiped my computer and turned it into a brick. Hurt like a bitch. I never went back to that project. Don't know if I ever will. I'm now obsessive about saving and only write on a computer that has no internet access.
I lost everything once -- temporarily, of course. Something happened to my computer. I'm not sure what, and I can't even remember exactly. But it corrupted every single document I had. I opened them up and it was literally just nonsense on a page. Fortunately, the program I used created backups, which I didn't know about at the time. I did enough digging though that I was able to find them and restore them. But it was pretty terrifying. I now have Scriviner backup my work every time I save and close a document.
Lucky you! I at times had backups that saved the day (that I had to hunt for cause my system saved them with weird temp names in weird folders) so it's nice when a program has past versions saved when something gets lost/overwritten. Right now, I'm nearly done rewriting (I even made it better, so yay) but I can't remember the specific dialogue of a main scene. I just can't bring it the same feel and logical movement that it had before. It reads like a trashy YA novel now even though my characters are in their mid twenties...
This is why I intend to organize my writing to support printing, real soon now. By "to support printing" I mean that I'd rather avoid printing hundreds and hundreds of pages repeatedly because I might possibly perhaps have changed a few paragraphs in there somewhere. To avoid that require a little planning. I was going to store it in binders, but it occurs to me that if I'm doing this primarily as a safety measure, I could just use a file cabinet, because I won't be reading it often. Hmm.
I haven't lost any writing yet but I have lost graphic design work. I now back up everything on an external drive and at times e-mail writings to myself also.
google docs backs me up automatically with every keystroke. It can get laggy but I doubt I'll lose anything.
On Word I once overwritten an entire novel I wrote by accident. It took me a few months to write it too. You can tell I was a bit pissed when it happened. Luckily I had a backup on the internet.
Not writing, but I was doing some CAD work one time and took a break to check the related hobby forum. Somebody had posted a "Rick Roll" that caused popups which had to be clicked through, then proceeded to crash my computer. Should have been backing up more often, but I lost an hour or so's work, and now unfriend/block anyone who tries to sneak Mr. Astley onto my screen.
I lost around 200-700ish words cause idiot operator forgot to save. Turns out my puter thought I could write that bit that got lost better. And hey it was right, and now things are going much smoother. Now if all 31k had up and vanished, well have ever seen a pissed Cave Troll? The Short answer is no...
I think the last time I lost work was when I was 12 or so. Technically I've "lost work" by changing computers and not transferring old files that I'd forgotten about. When I was consistently writing, I always emailed myself a copy. My husband has also installed some backup programme on my laptop, which means it syncs to the cloud regularly. Old versions don't get wiped from the cloud for a specific reserve period (don't know how long, will have to ask my husband). Basically, chances of actually losing work are low.
Oh, I didn't know there was a feature on certain software that'll save old version for a period. I was always worried that if something goes horribly wrong, my online save will sync to the "bad" version and I'd lose work. Maybe I should look into it.
I started working on my series of short stories back in December 2012. All my WIPs were on my phone and when I moved into this apartment in 2013 the phone suddenly stopped working. Froze completely. The tech support people couldn't do anything to fix it, so the thing became unusable and I lost all my documents. Haven't bought a Nokia ever since Eventually I restarted the stories but it was never the same. I feel I lost some really good stuff I can never come up with again. Something else I've just remembered. I don't know if this counts as "lost work" but a long time ago I couldn't open a novel I was working on because I forgot the password for the doc. It dated back from my high school years so it was crap, but I felt very frustrated anyway (even tried to use a brute force software to open it). That's why I'm still weary about password-protecting my files, even though this time I'd probably choose a pass that's easier to remember.
@A.M.P. You know there was we called them 3 a quarter floppy diskettes, and later on compact discs or CDs if you like. There are older ways of saving stuff but that is predating me.
@tumblingdice Or a password you can write down somewhere safe @Cave Troll I don't think my PC can accept floppy discs >.>
I lost two stenographers' notebooks full of notes for my WIP. These were handwritten notes, so there was no backup. I'd been working on these notes at the downtown branch of the Toronto Public Library, and when I got back home, the books weren't in my bag. To this day I have no idea what happened to them. I don't think I've ever been as angry with myself as I was then. It was about twenty years ago and it still hurts.
Lost an entire novel draft once. The first draft. I don't know what happened but it was when I first got a laptop so, knowing me, I probably hit the wrong button. I was furious. That goes back almost 18 years. Now when I look over that novel's remaining drafts the first draft is actually the second draft. And there's a whole missing plot thread, of a rape, that didn't make it into the next draft. It's kinda weird because the story is so foggy in my mind the lost scene feels like something I dreamed up not that I actually wrote it. Just recently my computer froze and I lost an entire scene. Thankfully I had reread it and managed to capture a lot of my favorite bits. I tried not to panic or get too upset that my 'pearls' were gone for good. In fact I managed to remember quite a bit and was pretty satisfied with the duplicated scene.
Lucky. Half of my chapter sounds better as I was able to add a few things that needed to be in it but now I'm at the seduction/sex scene and it's... not working for me as it had before, which is weird.
Are you trying too hard to capture what was lost? When I did my second draft of my lost novel - I just started from scratch - I had an outline to follow but there was no way I could recapture the tone. I had to just start fresh and not try to remember how I had worded things.
Maybe? I did like the wording prior because it had worked but now I feel like it doesn't capture the tone/scene well. Perhaps it's something best to get through and work at a later stage?
That's what I do. Right now it's probably still stinging and it could look worse than it is. But put some time between it and it probably isn't as bad.
