As we go forward in this particular series, I must stress to you all that every writer has a horror story about story they lost, a draft they couldn’t find or an idea they believe someone stole from them (sometimes that last part is more accurate than you think!). But for this section, let is concentrate on lost work.

Brief Storytime-

I was working on a sequel to my novel RUBY (currently on Amazon! Kinda proud of that!), on Isabella. That is the name of the computer my husband (now ex-husband) got me for Christmas. I had been in the habit of saving my work in two places since my Junior year of college, but since this was a new computer? I didn’t back anything up.

I didn’t think I needed to!

When the computer gave me the update notification, I knew I saved the work, so I proceeded with the update. And what happened next had me crying on the floor with all of my 35+ year old self. The update called my computer to crash.

CRASHED. I screamed and cried and called my sister in a panic. After pulling myself together an hour plus later, I took Isabella to the Windows store. Two days later they rescued almost everything on it (YAY!) except my novel–with 3 chapters of my book.

Now, in owning that this was my fault (not the crash, but the not saving of my work!), here is what I should have done:

1.) Save the work to a jump drive or Cloud.

2.) Invest in Google Dropbox and put all information there.

3.) If nothing else, get a dump email account to just put all my WIP’s there.

This would have saved me 60 minutes of freaking out and I would have finished that book.

I’m still mad about it. Don’t be like me. Save your work.