The End?

I promise I won't do any more of these. Until the next time ...

Look into my eyes ...

This is silly but quite clever. Then again I'm rather simple about these things - you'll undoubtedly work it out much faster than I did. Sorry it's a bit blurry, but that's the best way to view David Copperfield in my opinion.

**Warning - Don't look into his eyes for too long, or you'll fall in love with him.

Admission of gross stupidity

How many times have I been told to back-up work on the PC? Only a squillion and two. The words are instilled in me, as they should be in anyone who uses a computer every day. Do I take heed? Well most of the time I do, actually. After all I'd hate to lose 13000 precious words wouldn't I? Precious to me. To anyone else it might seem a blessing.

So why oh why oh why in the name of Maltesers, did I not do that very simple thing on my last few writing sessions??? I know why. I'm a fool. I copy my work onto a memory stick, which I'm forever jabbing into my Netbook then transferring to the computer at home or even at the library sometimes, and I started getting lackadaisical about saving to the hard drive. Naturally the unthinkable happened.

Yesterday I saved my work to the USB pen as usual, stuck it in the PC later on, tried to open the document (with the whole novel on it - 77000 words worth) and...nothing. Worse than nothing. A nasty little message saying "this file is corrupt and unreadable." I knew how it felt. Except my face was pretty easy to read.

Bashing myself over the head with a dustbin lid was the least of it. Frantically opening the document I last saved to the PC I don't know how long ago, I realised I'd lost 13000 words. I tried to distance myself from the fact (oh okay, I cried) and spent the rest of the evening fiddling about trying to recover/repair the USB file (ahem, this has happened before) to no avail. I even bought and downloaded some online software that promised the earth and didn't deliver.

Then...

Up at 6.30 this morning, wearily determined to either have another go at repairing the file, or simply start writing all those words again (no chance of meeting my deadline now I thought - and who would believe me when it sounds like the worst sort of excuse? - I blinked at the screen.

What was that? A recovered temporary file in Notepad??

I opened it tentatively, holding my breath, and almost cried again. It was nearly all there. 1000 words and some bits of editing I did yesterday morning had gone; hadn't saved for some reason - must be when the corruption or whatever it was happened - but the rest was intact. In a strange font with no formatting, but what the hell. A victory dance was performed. It wasn't very elegant but the dog didn't mind.

Oh my days. Relieved? I've had a bar of Fruit n' Nut for breakfast to celebrate.

Will I be backing up in future? I already have, in about five different places and now I need a lie-down.

Reality Byte

After seeing Lane's fabulous mini-movie Surgery (if you haven't already do go and check it out, it's brilliant) I was inspired - or should I say distracted - to try it for myself.



If you're tempted to give it a go - don't. It's addictive.