You’re on about 80k of your latest novel, proud of all you have created so far and looking forward to the completion of a fine embodiment of good literature… when lo and behold, your computer crashes and your entire hard drive is wiped clean, effectively consigning your masterpiece to an early virtual grave. Ever happened to you? And did you cry? (Be honest)
OMG! That would be awful! I always save my stories/novels to a memory stick. Ever happened to you, friendly neighbourhood clown?
Nothing that bad has ever happened to me. I've lost a few thousand words, at most. But to be honest, I'm far too paranoid about that for it to happen. I have all my writing backed up onto an external hard drive, a memory stick, an SD card, and an old MP3 player Huzzah for obssessive redundancy!
Thats, DSM criteria for obsessive compulsive disorder, lol. No, such a tragedy has never befallen me, thankfully. I save my stuff every once in a while on a flash, which often takes me about half an hour to locate. Once I dreamt it happened. Frightening stuff. But surely somebody, somewhere must have suffered this fate...?
If they have, poor them! Yes, Bazai, you should definitely get checked for OCD. I'm not that obsessive, and I have it!
Haha. I sometimes wonder if I do. But it doesn't really affect my life (other than the organisation of my documents, etc) so I don't see that it matters. How bad is yours? And wow to the new avatar. Do you glow like that in real life?
Better compulsively safe and have everything well i say! Have my work saved on two computers and two memo sticks in two houses MIND YOU - to be honest, the quality of my work, really isnt worth it, BUT its my baby and i have to look after it at all costs... When i was younger i used to have to check locked doors and the such at least four times before i was happy with the result (same with taps before going to bed), im better now....im down to 3 times!
Hehe, angelic That's my thinking. Well, that and if I don't back everything up 20 times over, my friends and family will die a horrible painful death. (That was a joke, by the way. Apologies if it's in bad taste )
I back up my work on plenty of stuff. I even send a copy of it to my email every month or so. I have lost a few thousand words before, however, because I forgot to back it up.
I've never lost everything, thank God. I wouldn't only cry if I did, I'd probably want to die. (And I'm not being dramatic or exaggerating here. My work is my life.) Fortunately I save my work to a flash drive, and most of it is posted online (the finished stuff, at least), so...*crosses fingers* It's such a situation that I don't even want to think about it too much. So I don't.
I'll help. I've only written 35k, but my computer crashed, and I hadn't put any on a flash drive. I was freaking out. But my dad's friend managed to salvage the data, and now I put it all on a flash drive, and print some out.
Back to the topic then, I once lost a 30K story to hard drive failure, it was fairly poor as it was way back when I'd just started to write seriously but it did teach me the importance of OCD when it comes to backing up your work, I now back up from computer to laptop to SD card to external HDD. I'm a great believer in redundancy.
No, but something close. I had ever paper I wrote in my doctorate program on an old laptop. I sent it in to Geek squad to get the hinge on the screen fixed. It came back with an entirely new hard drive and several other things which I didn't ask for, and ironically were free, and upgrades. However, I wasn't pleased with it. I called the Geek office to see if I could get my drive back. They said they drill a hole in each one they remove and throw it away. I became so outraged that if I could have gone to the center I would have done illegal violence to a variety of people. Thankfully for all of us, they were located across the country.
Are you serious....sounds very fishy See if that was me, id have got three mates and gone on a road trip to whoop some butt.
To answer your question. Yes this happened to me. I lost three stories that were roughly around 350 pages each, because I never count words, just not my style, not my thing. (And everyone knows that word count changes drastically with each and every revision, if it does not, you're doing it wrong) I had one that was working on my second review of to correct grammar and flow of the story, even talked with an agent about getting it published. They liked what I sent them and wanted to see it when I was done with the editing. Then my Hard Drive just stopped working. I lost those stories and about a dozen short stories. I cried when I told the agent that I lost it, they just told that I should have backed it up and that was our last discussion, which means.. .Sucks to be you..I don't blame them, they have a job to do and I screwed up so they move on to the next contender. I have not recovered from that to tell the truth.
