We have all had that awful moment when we suddenly realize that the computer has eaten our work. It’s a moment of panic. In many cases, you can do a simple “undo” move and get your writing back on the screen but for that moment before you figure out that the work can be saved you feel this terrible sinking in your gut.
And sometimes, the feeling is even worse because the computer has won and there is not going to be any saving of the work.
This problem doesn’t happen to me often. Since I write all day long for a living, I’m really good about doing frequent saves and backing up my work regularly. I’m meticulous about it. But things go wrong sometimes. And every once in awhile I experience one of those situations when I’ve lost a big chunk of original writing and there aren’t many options for getting it back.
That happened to me about a month ago with the book that I’m working on. I’m writing a San Francisco travel guide based on my blog San Francisco is Sexy. Or I was until about a month ago. What happened was a stupid error … I was getting ready to reformat my laptop so I saved all of my work to my desktop computer. Only some things delayed me and I didn’t get around to the reformatting for a few weeks. At that time, I went to save the work to the desktop again. And I made a mistake.
For some reason, I just didn’t re-save the file that had the book in it. I saved everything else. Bookmarked sites I don’t need, work that is already online and doesn’t need to be backed up … but I simply missed that file. I had done a lot of work on the book in those few weeks. When I went to move the files back to my newly formatted computer and saw what I’d done, I felt this terrible disappointment in my gut.
The truth is that it’s not that bad. I still have the previous draft of the book from the first save. I know where all of my research came from. It’s not going to be that difficult to write the original copy again. Although I could pay money to try to get the most recent draft back, I don’t think it’s worth it because really it’s not that terrible to rewrite the thing again. In fact, I tend to think that it’s a chance to start with fresh eyes and to do a better write-up this time around.
However, I can’t seem to get my brain to move through the writer’s block that was caused by this setback. I know that it’s not a big deal and that it’s an easy re-write and that it might be better this time. I know that the only way to get it done is to get going on it. And yet every time I open up the document and see the missing pieces that I know were once there, I freeze up … I just don’t want to write it again.
I’m not sure what this means. That I’m not as committed to the project as I thought? That it’s not as exciting or appealing to me as it was originally? Maybe. Or maybe I’m just still sulking that the computer beat me this time. Since books don’t write themselves, I’m going to have to get over whatever it is. I’ll do that. Tomorrow.
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