Total words written: 7600. Total progress, 2400.

[seawasp]

Those who know how I write will be asking "Huh? You never rewrite. So how's that possible?"

Easy.

You write 2400 words on Saturday.

You write 5200 words on Sunday.

You then go to back up your work, and copy in the wrong direction.

Yes, that's right. I copied the backup over the new file, rather than vice versa.

One whole day down the drain. I might as well have sat down and played video games all day.

Comments

[howardtayler.livejournal.com]

Except that your brain now remembers having written those words, instead of remembering having played games. That's gotta be worth SOMETHING.

Aaargh!

[shana.livejournal.com]

{{{Hugs}}] and virtual chocolate.

[julesjones]

Oh, *ick*. I feel your pain. :-( Sympathies...

[(Anonymous)]

Any possibility that an autobackup might be lurking somewhere on the hard drive? Backups sometimes exist in nonobvious places. (Ten or fifteen years ago I'd have known what to do to find out. I'm behind the curve these days.)

El

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Aaaah. I live in fear of doing just that. Condolences.

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

Eek. My sympathies.

[kengr]

If you are using a Windows system, I recommend Second Copy. It'll backup automatically, even over a LAN and if you tell it to, make multiple version backups.

My entire system gets backed up every couple of hours.

And a few places get seperate backups with the last three versions being kept.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain.

This is why I back up after every editing session, not just every few days, and make multiple backups of my work tree onto different hard drives on different computers (and a USB thumb drive on my keyring, just for luck).

Yes...

[seawasp]

... something like self-loathing.

I'm going to try to reconstruct the stuff in the evenings this week, since I go on vacation next week and who knows whether I'll have time to write.

The annoying thing was that I *was* over 70,000 words, and this of course bounced me well back into the 60s. Those large number shifts hurt.

I have not been able...

[seawasp]

... to find one. I use MS Word on a Mac. I couldn't find any files that were likely candidates. (I suspect after you close Word it actually cleans up after itself these days...)

Alas...

[seawasp]

I do exactly the same thing as you (literally -- after every session, onto different drives on different computers, and onto my USB drive). This WAS after one editing session. One 5 hour session. And at the end of it I just started by copying in the wrong direction.

Because I do it your way, of course, I at least did NOT lose what I did on Saturday.

Re: Alas...

[argonel.livejournal.com]

Have you considered or looked into setting up a CVS or Subversion repository for your writing? When you make a mistake like that it would let you revert to a previous version. Don't know how well it would work with for checkin/checkout of MS word files other than treating them as Binary blobs.

Considering the cost of storage/CD's you could also consider immediately burning a CD at the end of a writing or editing session. Label them with the date and time and you would have a complete record of your writing and editing.

The downside of place-value notation

[lexomatic.livejournal.com]

The ways in which humans perceive and prefer round numbers are well-known to marketers who set prices.

I suggest you go analog. Use a bar graph, like one of those big outdoor "United Way Pledges" signs. You could use a magnet on your fridge, or a thumbtack in a corkboard, to track your progress. Maybe one of those cork strips, attached vertically to the wall, with a hardcopy graduated scale affixed to it. You could color-code the thumbtacks, or date each increment.

A photograph of this arrangement would make a dandy visual aid when talking about your progress. ("I wrote three inches of story this week!")