The Joys of Fiction

Backup plans

The dreaded horror of computers and how they trick you into either overwriting your work or unsaving it.

how to prevent it or how to get over it? 

How to prevent it: always have more than one copy of your work somewhere else. In a USB, or another folder, etc. And here's a thing: if word asks you to choose which version of a document you want, and it has a table up the side with two different times it was save, for the love of your story choose the most recent saving and DO NOT CLICK THE ALREADY HIGHLIGHTED BUTTON. 

Because this happened to me..... the midnight crisis. I'd just got on to the computer, opened my story, and was faced with the thing i described above. Me, not bothering to read it properly, reflexively hit the selected button (stupid little button going around ruining people's lives)and about 500 words that I'd laboriously slogged out the day before disappeared. 

Just.... gone. Of course I had a heart attack. How many times have i wished i had a time machine and gone back in time to fix what i'd done - well if i had a dollar for every time i've had a moment like that this year, then I'd be able to have enough money to pay for the tech knowledge i so need to learn. 

And for lmore than an hour my brother (who never goes to sleep before 2 am) tried to get back my 500 words, and after sifting through like 500 different files and leaving no avenue unexplored, he managed to recover 54 of those 500 words. I'm grateful for him to have managed to get that back because hey at least it's better than nothing, but what would you do if that happened to you? How do you get over it?
The way of not getting over it is to have a panic attack. I have mini panic attacks at certain things that are almost nothing compared to the ones that a friend of mine (who actually has anxiety) goes through. And I'm just about the most useless person around with dealing with panic attacks. I'll just stand there trying to think of something to say that isn't cliche or stupid babbling and feel completely useless. 

So how do you deal with losing your work? You probably can't afford rehab and you have a commitment in the morning or the same day, or your work is due in or it had your grand epiphany in it or whatever. Here's not to do what I did, which was stay up a further 3 hours trying to remember exactly what I wrote. Except that logical me decided that, Heyyyy Steph, why don't you choose this inhuman hour to write some completely different inhuman things? Since my story is a fantasy, that makes it 12344467653 times harder to rewrite something that came down perfectly the first time. Having to make the annoying oxymoron of fantasy:(1. imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained) sound realistic (2. existing or occurring as fact; actual rather than imaginary, ideal, or fictitious) and believable. 

So i guess there's no way to make it sound exactly the same as the first time. But losing your work, too, is motivation. Don't try to remember exactly what you wrote, but instead let your brain vomit: if it's on a roll, don't get up to have a break after only 5 or 10 minutes (though don't forget to stretch often. Neck rolls and back stretching is helpful. You don't want to end up like a chunk of glue). 

So I guess my whole rambling point for this post is, always have more than one copy of your stuff. If you're panicked, eat something. If you lost work, vomit it out of your brain because it'll likely remember little details later anyway when you type something that triggers it. If you sit down for too long, get up and stretch. And if you're a night person, just don't go to bed later than 1 am. You'll wake up feeling like a murderous stuffed chicken. Because my brother wittily decided to pick a fight at 3.50am last night/this morning and woke mum and dad up and you know the anticipation of doom?
Yeah I can usually tell when mum and dad are going to open their door, because first it rattles, then it takes 5 seconds to open it. so yeah. You don't want the feeling of doom to get set off when you try to sneak back upstairs 5 hours after you should've already done it.
I might go to bed now, actually. Oh look! it's midnight exactly now. I suppose if I go to bed now then it's 4 hours earlier than last night....
and annoyingly, today I felt like a shrivelled prune. I just wrote 3500 words yesterday and today was like, where did all the juice go?! Because me on a roll when I'm writing is like my brain is going drunk. 
Midnight Brain: heyyyyy! Look at that niiiice idea! let's write it down! OOhhh yeeeeah I'm on a roll I just wrote 2376 words without stoppin' I love this midnight juiceeee.
Morning brain: what

Edit July 2021: Every time i work backwards making these edits, i think it's the last, but no it's not, so here i am again, doing what i should've done 5 years ago:

Rambling point #1: If you lose your work, just word vomit out every single detail you can remember, perfectness be damned. As you go over it later, other details will pop up, and it may even come out better than it originally was.

Rambling point #2: 90% of the time you're feeling grouchy, remember to stretch your spine. as i'm writing this very sentence, i had to straighten my slouch. 10 to 1 you're slouching right now. there! your back will thank you.

Rambling point #3: please go to bed before 1am. your body will thank you. i know, because it is past 1am now, and my body will not thank me tomorrow when it will sleep through the parts of the olympics i actually want to watch, unless i set an alarm, which i do not want to do on a sunday.