Disasters and Other Minor Complications

You might be wondering why I start the blogging year this late. After all, January is all but over. Truth be told, I just didn’t have the nerve to sit down and tell you about the boring things that happened, so I decided to wait for something worth talking about.

I should have known better… Since disasters are more newsworthy than most other stories, it stood to reason that I would be struck by it. And I did.

During January, I wrote most of the first draft of an eBook about coding eBooks by hand. Last week, I dove into the Bells&Whistles chapter that I had been looking forward to. Over three days and a weekend, I wrote several thousand words. Since I’ve been a programmer for quite a while, I made sure that my backup program was backing up according to schedule, and thought nothing could happen to me and my material. Fat chance!

When I opened the file on Monday afternoon to add a link to a resource I had found, half the file was missing all of a sudden. No explanation, no reason. Word hadn’t crashed and neither had my PC. I still don’t understand what exactly happened to the rest of my file. Relaxed, I called up my backup which had run the night before and searched for the file — it wasn’t there.

Argh… This hadn’t happened to me in years. I actually cried about losing that much work. But I recovered. By now, I’ve recreated most of what I lost already and made it even better than it was before. My stubborn mind insisted that the would not keep me from finishing the manuscript.

And then… my eldest lost her passport, and I got a cold and needed to see the doctor, and my other two kids got two days off of school… It seems as if someone has conspired against me. 😉

But I will get this manuscript done, no matter what. It just might take a little longer than I had planned. And (I think) it made for a good blog posts.

And the morale of the story?
Never give up, never surrender!

8 thoughts on “Disasters and Other Minor Complications”

  1. Juneta says:

    I am so sorry to hear about your lost work. That is tough and a fear I have too. Again I am sorry it happened. I was nominated for an award and part of it is tag or nominated others, so
    Hey, I have an award for you at my blog!
    My post

    I hope all works out for best and never happens again.
    Juneta

  2. Mil Holmes says:

    Yep, there must have been a reason. So glad you were able to turn the disaster around and get something better.

    1. Cat says:

      Thank you for your concern.

  3. D J Mills says:

    Thankfully, non fiction is easier to recreate than fiction, because the processes are the same, no matter how many times you write it, whereas fiction can be similar, but never the same, each time it is rewritten. I know, because when my computer died, thankfully, I only lost a month or two worth of work because I was slack with backups. 🙁

    Glad you got a better chapter the second time round. 🙂

    1. Cat says:

      Thanks for your vote of confidence. 😉
      Yes, backups are crucial. I even figured out why the program didn’d back up my file. I was using libre-office at that time and the backup program just didn’t recognize the file-format.

  4. Will Hahn says:

    Such horrible news Kat! I had no idea, but should have expected it was bad news, you’ve been rather quiet recently. I hope your recall is perfect and the rewritten draft comes out even better than before. That happened to me once and I’m pulling for the same result.

    1. Cat says:

      I’ve recovered. Thanks for your kind words. And yes, the new stuff I wrote is better than what I had before. Considering the overall picture, there was a reason for the loss. 😀

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