My computer ate an entire chapter of A of A!

[inzilbeth]

I hate computers! I've always hated them and after last night I hate them with an even greater passion.

I spend about two hours yesterday evening finally kicking into shape an extra chapter for Aspects of Aragorn. It had been a bit of a pig and I'd been getting nowhere fast with it. So you can imagine my relief when I went to click 'save', fully intending to send it onto Cairistiona and Passolargo for their invaluable opinions.

Well I'm still not quite sure what happen, but the computer did not save it. It was nowhere to be found. Fortunately I have a good friend those knowledge of computers is inversely proportional to my own. But after an hour on the phone, he sadly pronounced my chapter well and truly lost for good. All 11 pages of it!

I didn't burst into tears. It was only a chapter, I told myself; no one died. It was by now after 10pm and I had been up since 4am. I was of half a mind to abandon the whole thing but instead, and I'm quite proud of myself for doing this, I turned around and started rewriting it, though looking at that first line with 11 more pages to go was very daunting. I kept going until 11.30pm at which point I was writing total gibberish. Thankfully, I've not in work this week, so today, I shelved all my plans for the day and kept at it all morning. Five hours later it is at least recognisable as the same chapter though there are still no end of frustrating bits that just don't read the same this time round.

The moral of this story: never ever work on anything without a copy of the original somewhere else. I certainly never want to do that again.

Oh the chapter is called 'Roheryn.'  It'll be here in a couple of weeks [I hope!]

Comments

[nierielraina.livejournal.com]

Are you sure you didn't save it in some obscure location by accident? That has happened to me before. Check your temp docs and all your folders!

One way to eliminate this from happening as well is to save that doc as soon as you open it as a file. Then every line or two you type, hold CTRL and type 's' and you automatically save your work as you go. I learned that after losing a couple chapters myself, so I sympathize.

*hugs*

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the tip, NiRi. I am a bit of a computer duce so that's why I rang my friend who I guess then checked all the likely places. I will check again as I'm always going to feel the original was the better version.

[nierielraina.livejournal.com]

It always is, isn't it? No matter how you try to rewrite, your heart went into the first and your frustration goes into the second. :)

Remember that save as you go rule! It's saved I can't tell you how much heartache for me! Instead of losing the whole chapter, I might lose a sentence or a few words. It's just part of my typing now. Type, CTRL S, type, CTRL S. :)

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

'Your heart went into the first and your frustration goes into the second' - oh that is so true!

I've had a go doing this already and, yes, it is easy isn't it. Usually I lose stuff because the puppy turns the computer off so this will be very handy even for those more everyday problems! Thanks so much, again.

[lissas-elves.livejournal.com]

Auch! How terrible for you - Im really sorry to hear about this :-(

But it's just amazing that you went right back to work and attempted to recreate the whole thing! I hope you manage to get it polished into shape, but it can be incredibly difficult to remember the words that flowed so easily the first time around. *keeps finger crossed for you*

NiRi's advice about creating the file straight away and save often is sound, but if one gets carried away it's easy to forget.

Do I sound as if I know from personal experience? *coughs* Of course not!

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

That's exactly the problem, I've sort of remembered all the sentences but it all seems to flow from a different part of the brain when you're remembering something as opposed to creating and it just doesn't read the same.

What I can't believe was that it not only didn't save what I had written that time but actually lost everything that I had previously saved.

Glad I'm not the only one to have had this problem LOL!

[lissas-elves.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's real spooky that it ate what you'd already saved! *shudders* Now if it'd been on the eve of the 31st ...

Seriously though, could it be a bug?

>>it all seems to flow from a different part of the brain when you're remembering something as opposed to creating <<

I know exactly what you mean. :-(

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

Oh my, I hope it's not a bug. I wouldn't even know where to begin with something like that. So far everything has been OK today so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I'm glad you didn't think I was completely daft about that brain stuff!

[lissas-elves.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you didn't think I was completely daft about that brain stuff!

No, I know what you mean. Have tried it a couple of times and become real annoyed with myself; NiRi described it quite well - lol.

I've taken to carrying a notebook with me always. If a few lines suddenly spring to mind they go down on paper immediately 'cause they don't come back later.

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

I try and jot things down too. I few weeks back I was trying to write a new chapter in a hurry but had a long job to do with the sheep on the Saturday so rather than lose the writing time, I kept thinking about the chapter the whole time and so was forever climbing out of the sheep pens to go back to the vehicle to write down my ideas. It drove Skip absolutely crazy as he always follows me everywhere in case I need him. After a few times, I'll swear he was looking at me as if to say 'what ARE you doing?' LOL!

[lissas-elves.livejournal.com]

lol - poor Skip! How about training him to fetch the notebook instead? Or getting one of those you keep in a little 'pocket' to protect it.

How's the rewrite going? I hope you haven't run into any more problems with the comp.

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

Training Skip to fetch the notebook? That's a good idea; it would give him something to do while I'm busy worming or whatever. Things have a habit of falling out of my pockets when I'm doing sheep things and generally disappear into the mud never to be seen again!
Well, the rewrite is slowly coming together, thanks. There are still those annoying places where I just can't remember what I wrote first time round but it could be worse.

How did the blue tongue vaccine go? Have you done it yet?

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

Really, sometimes you just want to bash these computers with a sword, don't you? *sigh It's just terrible that you lost your file like that, but yes, lesson learned is always back up the file. One fairly quick although somewhat temporary back up is to simply email the file to yourself. I've done that before when thunderstorms were looming and I hadn't backed up everything for a while and didn't have time to do it while the lightning was crashing around me. But I do think the best bet is one of the online backup services ... I use Carbonite, and I noticed this morning that it had backed up everything in my LOTR fic folder and had one pending to be "back up in 107 minutes" and sure enough, later when I checked, that file was backed up. I don't know how it all works yet (still using the free trial period), but apparently several times a day the little program for it that runs in the background will scan all the files and back up any that have been updated. I really do think it will be worth the money, because I'm terrible about not running regular backups.

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

Ah, computer bashing sounds really good to me right now!
That's a good tip about the emailing and I'll look into the Carbonite option. I'm just amazed that the whole thing sank without trace - it doesn't do much for my confidence that it won't happen again.

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

That is a really odd thing, that it just disappeared completely. We rely so much on computers and take their dependability for granted--and then something like this happens as a painful reminder that things don't always go according to plan. I'm sitting here staring at my computer tower, daring it to even THINK about hiccuping!

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks so much Lady R and *hugs* back as I know you've been having a far worse time with RL. It's only words at the end of the day after all!

[calen-greenleaf.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I hate it when that happens!

It's happened on a number of occasions...

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

It is sooooooo frustrating, isn't it!

[calen-greenleaf.livejournal.com]

Very. Once my entire computer died. that time, I hadn't gotten into the habit of backing everything up on a flash drive. I was frantic, but a man from my church was able to restore everything. The problem? Window's automatic updates. I would get a Mac, but I'm waiting for this computer to expire before I do so...

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

That's extraordinary that the updates did that, not that anything would really surprise me where computers are concerned. Thank heavens for people who do actually understand them!

[estelcontar1.livejournal.com]

Sooooooooo I was right, and it was computer related. Computers sometimes suck biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig time, don't they?

Niriel's advice is a good one I always save the text everytime I finish a paragraph. When I'm writing long texts on the net I usually keep a back up copy on Word because there has been many a time I wanted to throw my computer out of the window after loosing huge texts I was emailing someone, or something similar.

But you're a brave one to start writing it all over again yesterday after such a frustrating experience and after such a tiring day.

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

It's just such a waste of time having to redo everything isn't it! I will definitely save by NiRi's method paragraph by paragraph from now on.
Whether it was worth the bother of rewriting, I'll let you decide!

[estelcontar1.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it was very much worth the bother, but I still say you were very brave to start rewriting it immediately after having lost the original one.

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

Oh no,I truly feel for you!It is the most horrible feeling.I was fed up when I lost a drabble the other day!

I try to remember to use google docs as backup.

I'll look forward to reading your rewritten chapter.

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

It is so frustrating, isn't it? I'm sorry about your drabble. I do hope the chapter will be worth reading after all this!

[arwen75]

I hate computers eating documents - happened to me several times when I was writing up my PhD thesis. Resurrecting what I'd just written then was fun. That's when I learnt to save as I go along - and to be honest I have the autosave function in Word turned on for a reason :D Lost too many important documents for work not to. Last week I lsot the best part of a lecture thanks to PowerPoint crashing on me - thankfully I had backed it up so it was in fact only 20 mins or so's work I lost but still....

Have to agree it is frustrating - but your best friend is Ctrl-S - use it regularly and this things will hopefully be a thing of the past :D

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

That must have been awful to lose important stuff like that. And PowerPoint is forever causing massive problems where I work too. This was only fan fic after all! I had no idea that you had to actually turn on the auto save option until my friend told me I didn't have it. It's hard to imagine why that isn't built in as automatic. Does anyone WANT to lose their work?!!

I will certainly do the 'save as you go' from now on, but what I still can't understand is why I lost the entire document when the bulk of it had already been saved from the previous time I worked on it.