Sunday, September 30, 2012

Abrupt Halt

I went to open the manuscript in order to do some editing and I realized it didn't look right. My "blue marks" that I use to tell me where I am in the process, were gone.

After a quick perusal, I realized all the editing I had done over the past six weeks had disappeared. I was staring at an old file, but it was the last one I'd opened, according to the time stamp on it.

I'm very meticulous about saving my documents when I'm working on them, clicking that button every time I get up from the keyboard, just in case the cats try to do a little editing for me while I'm AFK. I can assure you, I have not been attached to my computer for six weeks with no breaks.

The edits are simply gone. They were difficult changes to make because they were complicated (but quite necessary) and when I had finished them, I was very happy with the results. It was worth the hard work to be able to get to that point. Now all that work is gone, and to be honest, right now, I just don't think I can do it again. I don't know that I even want to keep working on it.

2 comments:

  1. Oh no! What a shock!

    Try clicking your Windows button and where it says Search for Files, type in a word that you know you added during the edit - e.g., a new character or new location name, or if you remember looking up a synonym during the edit that you'd not used before.

    If that doesn't help, even searching for one of your characters will bring up every file on your computer with that character in it. You may have saved it somewhere different by mistake.

    What I do if I even get up for a glass of water is email the ms to myself. I have it set up as a shortcut in Word. That way I have back-ups in various stages of progress, and it also helps if I want to undo an edit - I can revert to a previous version.

    Good luck xx

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  2. Thanks Elle. I had been emailing it but didn't realize where it was going when I opened it up and saved it with the new name.

    All is well, much to my relief. Thanks. :)

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