I always write my intended book on a note book and then after I have so many pages I type it all up. Well, my newest novel, the one i actually really love and really hope to publish has been going great, I finally decided to sit down and start typing it all, I'm typing away when I realize there is a giant jump in the story. after a few minutes of staring at the page I realize that I wrote an entire scene on three receipt backs!! Receipts I threw away because I thought I typed them up! AHH!!
haha, excuse my laughter. I laugh out of pain, because I have been there. Big jump in my story, couldn't figure out what I had done to patch the gap, thought it wasn't an entire scene. Had to re-work it. The last time I lost an entire scene it was a computer error, and I lost a lot - the first written scene, the one I lost was one that made me cry to write (and reread), and never could get that feeling back, so the rewrite of it isn't as good. Wish I could figure out what I did the first time! Good luck! Hope it wasn't anything too dramatic, but you will recover.
No. I barely ever write anything by hand since typing is so much faster/easier on the wrist. However, when I first started I did write by hand and now when there's no computer near me I'll pick up a pen and pad. Or if I'm feeling particularly ludic. But man, the sense of accomplishment you get from that fat wad of pages you hand-wrote must be incredible; my novel so far is forty-two pages typed, and I feel good about that. So I can only imagine how you must feel...
I feel your pain! I don't hand write anymore but argh! Lost data on the computer down to power cut - awful. Wrote scenes in my head then went to write them and got distracted by people talking at you as you desperately try to shoo them away and then the image flitters away. Wrote notes on my novels in two different notebooks and lost one! (<-- I understand that last one's my own fault entirely) So frustrating!! And as Sillraaria says, the re-write is never as good.
It really isn't. You know that's what happened to J.K Rowling? She got the idea like at a train station but didn't have a pen and lost some of her ideas while she had to ride home? Luckily for me it was only receipts so it wasn't that much of a scene, but even a few paragraphs really can make your story! Look at "Here's looking at you kid" Such a famous line! and its just one line! the woes of being a writer
Actually, that has happened to me. While I was traveling with my family on vacation, I decided to free write on a napkin. Well, one turned into four, and they were all together like the start of a story. I was fairly pleased with it, but then, while I fell asleep, an airline stewardess threw them all away. I was never able to get the wording just as I had it.
Wow! That really does blow, i would have been so upset at the stewardess, couldn't she see it had writing on it!
I always have too many ideas in the shower, and lose half of them on the way out of there. Such is life.
I usually write in my random note books. I literally have hundreds of notebooks filled completely with short stories. I am also making the transition to computer though. It hastens the process of writing immensely! Good luck to you rewriting that scene also!~ x
I guess she just wasn't looking. I thought I stuffed them in my pocket so I didn't notice until I got to the hotel. Then my brother told me about it being thrown away.
I feel your pain, only, I had an entire story thrown out on me when it was completely finished. After that, I couldn't bring myself to rewrite, only because, the words wouldn't come to me. It was a spur of the moment thing where an entire novel, something like thirty chapters long, was written in 48 hours- and no, I didn't sleep while on the writing craze, good thing I had soda. But yeah, it's happened to the best of us. Even to the big named authors.
I think that once King lost an entire manuscript and he had to rewrite everything within few days, so it' common... Personally when I handwrite I use Montblanc paper, not "normal" white paper, so I can track the sheets and I'm sure that I 'm not going to give away this kind of expensive paper.
I had the start of a novel on my dad's PC, then a month later he had to do a system restore and I lost that as well as a 150 digital camera pictures. The novel took a new direction so I didn't care but those pictures! Such a loss cause they were of a puppy and you can't retake those as they grow up so fast. Sucks even more cause I don't even like the full grown dog I've lost various stories and notes due to broken flash drives, computer failures, etc... but I never feel bad about it as the story is still in my head and I always feel I can word something better.
Yeah, losing pictures is worse. Do backups! I once lost the only copy of a digital painting that had taken some 100 hours to paint. All because of a faulty hard drive. It served as a solid lesson to do backups.
Aww. . . Sam, that sucks. . . I always write on the computer. I can't do jack with a pen. When I'm stranded somewhere, computerless, I've been known to write scenes in my head. I can usually remember the skeleton of it, if not the entire thing, when I get home, and the rest comes back when I sit down to write. . . You might want to try that some time. Burn the scene into your brain, and then the words. Imagine how they look on the page, formatted into paragraphs, sentences. . . How long are the sentences? How do they look exactly? The more detail you work out, the better you remember. If you practice, it's like having a picture in your head, which you can pull out at any time for reference. It's easier than you might think, especially if you have good visualision. As for the HD crashes. . . I've had it happen twice in the past, with major data loss. I actually cried the last time. Once burned, twice the caution; twice burned, thrice the caution. I'm super paranoid now. I save everything to both my desktop and a USB drive. Every couple of months or so, I archive my writing folder and send it to a gmail account.
Yeah I recently lost a desktop background I made, only took four hours, but damn that's some hard work lost! I'm pretty good now about backing things up onto jump drives now, but those have failed on me too. External HDDs are a joke. I've heard multiple first hand accounts of them going up in flames. Solid State Disk backup or bust. HDDs have questionable reliablility in general. When I build my gaming computer I may go SSD.
Haha happened to me. First novel I ever did filled up two composition notebooks, and then I had to type it all out. I did it tho, and a couple weeks after the damn computer crashed T_T haha it didn't really matter tho as I reread my notebooks, thought the work was crap, and threw them away. I think. But oh man... to lose a novel made in 48 hours? That would be like losing a miracle to me lol
