Putting the Pieces Back Together

By Keith Fisher

Recently, I posted this on my Face Book wall.

Keith is crying buckets of tears. He did something stupid and lost two weeks of work on his new book. Never again, will he resist the urge to backup.

I received a gratifying response—mostly from my fellow writers, expressing their sympathy for the loss. One old friend offered to lend me a program to recover the files. I searched the internet for solutions. I felt stupid, but let me tell you the story.

I was loading a Microsoft Word data file and through a series of weird notes and windows, the program asked me if I wanted to revert to the saved version. I wrinkled my forehead and checked the file on my screen it was blank so I told the program yes. I knew better, but in my defense I was also working on a dozen things at the time.

The computer did what it was told. It deleted the original, in favor of the new matrix, (nothing). I was devastated. I’d spent two weeks working on that story without backing up.

As I might have mentioned, I’m writing this story in pieces, and from many points of view. Then later, I paste the pieces into chapters in the main data file. I breathed a sigh of relief because I thought I could reconstruct from the different pieces. Then, I realized there were three chapters I’d written directly into the main data file. Not to mention the strings of transition and dialog, making the POVs nest together.

I searched every inch of my hard drive for old temp files of all conceivable extension type, and managed to build a facsimile of part of the original. There was a lot, however, I couldn’t retrieve, and it devastated me.

But . . . as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been writing most of the first draft by hand, in notebooks, and transferring to the computer later. God Bless my notebooks. I went back and found the drafts, minus some minor parts.

Now, I’m re-writing my book. There are a few obscure thoughts and dialog, that will be lost forever, but I think I can patch it up again.

Some writers frown on my notebook way of drafting. It’s true, if I’d been smart enough to back it all up, I wouldn’t need them now, but I’m glad to have them.

Good luck in your writing—see you next week.