It's the weekend. Sacred time; time I look forward to because I can spend long uninterrupted hours doing what I love to do, something I'm passionate for... writing.
Only, when I pull out my trusty jump drive and prepare to open the latest novel I've been working on, it halts mid open and gives me the most awful shock of my life. The document can't be opened because there's a problem with the file. I.e., it's corrupted.
Ok -- Anyone who knows me really well knows that writing is my passion. Aside from teaching, it's what brings me joy and happiness. I have hopes and dreams and aspirations of becoming a NY times best selling author. I want my novels to be translated into several different languages and sold around the world. I want to fill up the shelves of bookstores with pieces of my fiction, and that way, even long after I'm dead, I can still give avid readers a place to escape to within the pages of my written work.
But no -- not tonight. Tonight the technology demon has reared it's ugly head and somewhere between April 23rd, the last time I worked on my book, and today, the file got corrupted and no matter what I did to try to recover it; it's gone. 245 pages of the inner workings of my mind, 333 total hours of writing and editing. The thing is, I've been working on this particular book since February 3rd and I'm pretty darn proud of it. I even had the last few chapters mapped out and I was ready to bring the book to a close.
But no -- not tonight. Tonight I got to stare at that little dialog box (I hate that dialog box) as it told me that my book was lost to me forever.
I don't know what to do. When you save things on jump drives, you expect them to be ok. I suppose I'll have to by a new one because this is the second time this has happened to me with this particular USB. The first time was in the summer. I lost a story I was working on, but it was only a short and I'd been on it for a week. In no way is it comparable to losing the running 80,000+ words I lost just now.
I quite frankly don't know what to do. Luckily I had a partial back up; saved from I don't know when. But it's about 10,000+ words short of where I currently was.
I'm at a fork in the road. I can just chuck this up to "It Wasn't Meant to Be" or I can submit myself to trying to recreate part of the novel that I wrote weeks ago.
Shock. Anger. Number. Disbelief. Regret. Those are just a few words to describe how I'm feeling right now.
Shock -- my heart sank when that message popped up on screen
Anger -- are you fucking kidding me? My book is gone!
Numb -- my book is gone...
Disbelief -- I can't believe this is seriously happening again
Regret -- damn it, why didn't I save it in a third location, or email it to myself, or put it in drop box. A whole lot of shoulda, coulda, woulda's....
It's safe to say I won't be writing tonight.
@JustJazzyD
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