My Stupidity Cancels Superbowl Party

[KayBratt]

I spent all of my Saturday making final edits on my novel. Stopped at 10 pm last night and was going to send it back to my editor at Red Adept early, but decided to do one more read through this morning.

I opened up the file today and noticed the change I made to the title wasn't showing. Started hyperventilating when I realized that every change I've made since 2/1 is gone. All 400 pages.

The only thing I can figure out is this. (and it makes me look like a total idiot) I was working from another computer on 2/1. I did the changes and sent it to myself via email. Yesterday morning I opened it up on current computer and began my final editing pass. I continually hit SAVE, because I am automatically programmed to do that. But I must have forgot to 'save it to my hard-drive' first, and it was still in email form. I don't know! But me and my husband have tried everything and spent over an hour searching and there is not another copy on this blasted computer that has a last worked on date of yesterday. And when I pull up the email and download it, the changes are not there.

So... Superbowl party is cancelled. I bet my husband wishes he wasn't married to an idiot author. Lessons learned? Lot of them, starting with the trusted USB stick sitting unused next to my computer.

 

[jillmyles]

Oh no! I have done this - opening a document in email and immediately working on it. It gets saved to some temporary file somewhere that can never be found again once you close the document. I am so sorry - I have been there before and it's awful.

[Eliza Baum]

Oh man, that sucks. I'm assuming you checked your temp files? When I open stuff directly from email, it's saving it here: C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Temp

I hate writing on multiple devices, but sometimes it just can't be avoided. Have you tried dropbox? I only recently got turned onto it, but it's AWESOME for working on more than one computer. If you can get in the habit of using it, anyway. I'm still working on that. It's tres convenient.

[CaedemMarquez]

Kay, I am so very sorry. That is so frustrating.

Caedem

[IsabellaL]

So sorry! I know it won't make you feel any better but this has happened to most of us at one time or another. I've lost track of how many 10+ email messages I have lost suddenly on Outlook Express.

[jackz4000]

What a shock. Not sure what email you use. I use Gmail and it routinely saves automatically and I will find stuff in my "saved" I never knew I had saved...to my great relief.

[ShayneHellerman]

Oh man, that sucks. I'm assuming you checked your temp files? When I open stuff directly from email, it's saving it here: C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Temp

I hate writing on multiple devices, but sometimes it just can't be avoided. Have you tried dropbox? I only recently got turned onto it, but it's AWESOME for working on more than one computer. If you can get in the habit of using it, anyway. I'm still working on that. It's tres convenient.

I second the Dropbox vote. I've been using it for about a year, and it's great. I know that doesn't help in this case, but it would for next time.

And maybe it is in your Temp file, like Eliza suggested. I'll cross my fingers for you that it's there.

[KayBratt]

No, it's not in the temp files.

Good news is that I was wrong, it wasn't 400 pages. It was 253. (I was thinking of my last novel which was a huge 91,000 words)

Yes, I'll be using Dropbox from now on. I already have an account, for that is what the artists use to send me my book covers and illustrations.

*Bangs head on desk..dumb...dumb....dumb...*

[JRTomlin]

Poor you! Seriously, that sucks.

[Sean Patrick Fox]

Sorry to hear that, Kay. The only thing I can say is that you should remember a lot of the changes you made the first time around.

[Andrew Biss]

So sorry, Kay. It happened to me once. I tried to console myself with the notion that my new revisions would be even better, since this would be yet another new pass through. Glass half full and all that.

[KayBratt]

Sorry to hear that, Kay. The only thing I can say is that you should remember a lot of the changes you made the first time around.

You are right, Sean. I am remembering them fairly quickly and using the Ctrl F search to find the areas and get them down as the thoughts pour in. My most frequent change made yesterday was taking dialogue from formal to casual. I have a habit of not using contractions in my rough draft, then I have to back and change them in the editing phase. (I heard somewhere that if you do not speak or write using contractions, it is sure sign of OCD. That's me..)

I'm at page 47 so making progress quickly!

[Jack Blaine]

Have you tried reopening the email file?  When you hit save you were saving to that file, at least if it works like mine does.  So all the changes should be in the email file.

[KayBratt]

Have you tried reopening the email file?  When you hit save you were saving to that file, at least if it works like mine does.  So all the changes should be in the email file.

Yes, it didn't save. Just my luck. And so very puzzling. It's like the universe is out to get me. *Paranoia is setting in..*

So sorry, Kay. It happened to me once. I tried to console myself with the notion that my new revisions would be even better, since this would be yet another new pass through. Glass half full and all that.

Yep. Andrew, you're right, too. I just found something I had missed in every pass.  

*back to work..no food, water or KB for the rest of the day as punishment..*

[Zelah Meyer]

That's the sort of thing I'm currently dreading!

I did a backup a couple of days ago and will be doing another one today, just in case.  You have my sympathies.  Have you tried looking in your temporary files or downloads folders on your PC in case there's a copy somewhere in one of those?  It's a long shot but worth doing.  You could do a search for a document containing a line of text you know you didn't edit if you want to see if it's hiding somewhere on your computer.  Good luck - either with finding the original or making the changes again swiftly.

For those using Dropbox - I've registered but not started using it yet & I have a question.  It says to click and drag the files you want to be backed up into the Dropbox folder.  Now, does that move them so they are now stored in the Dropbox folder rather than in the original location on your hard drive?  Or does it just create a link to the documents in their original locations and automatically back them up to the Dropbox folder (and your Dropbox online) every time you save the document that you've opened from its original location and saved after editing?

[Feenix]

Yes, I'll be using Dropbox from now on. I already have an account, for that is what the artists use to send me my book covers and illustrations.

Yes, Dropbox, or any other "cloud" back-up system works great... as long as I remember to start the document, etc. in one of the Dropbox folders.

Yes, I've forgotten to do that...   

Dave King

[DDark]

Someone here may know more than me on this, but at work we have people do this a lot. They save their files they open from an e-mail without saving it to their hard drive. I discovered we have a temporary NOTES folder that these usually end up in. Perhaps the home computer has the same thing, where it's in a temp folder?

[ShaunaG]

My sympathies.

But I wanted to make a comment about using Dropbox. I downloaded it last year, very excited about it until they changed their terms. Go and read them. They changed it so that if they need to decrypt your files and turn them over to law enforcement or government they can. Its not abnormal but still worries me that they can take our files.

"As set forth in our privacy policy, and in compliance with United States law, Dropbox cooperates with United States law enforcement when it receives valid legal process, which may require Dropbox to provide the contents of your private Dropbox. In these cases, Dropbox will remove Dropbox’s encryption from the files before providing them to law enforcement."

[Jan Hurst-Nicholson]

Jilly Cooper once left the only copy of her manuscript in the back of a taxi. She never got it back and had to begin the entire book from scratch (must have been before computers)   Don't know if I would have been able to do that.

[Andrew Warwick]

Ouch, that is painful.

[Millard]

Jilly Cooper once left the only copy of her manuscript in the back of a taxi. She never got it back and had to begin the entire book from scratch (must have been before computers)   Don't know if I would have been able to do that.

The trigger for Margot Kidder's breakdown was when her computer died, taking three years of autobiography writing with it.

[DDark]

My sympathies.

But I wanted to make a comment about using Dropbox. I downloaded it last year, very excited about it until they changed their terms. Go and read them. They changed it so that if they need to decrypt your files and turn them over to law enforcement or government they can. Its not abnormal but still worries me that they can take our files.

"As set forth in our privacy policy, and in compliance with United States law, Dropbox cooperates with United States law enforcement when it receives valid legal process, which may require Dropbox to provide the contents of your private Dropbox. In these cases, Dropbox will remove Dropbox’s encryption from the files before providing them to law enforcement."

I would imagine a valid legal process would involve a lawsuit of some kind. I have a very active imagination, and can imagine what types of scenarios might prompt this. Usually things I might see on Dateline 20/20 or 60 minutes. There are a lot of people who are up to no good, using storage sites to house documents, pictures, or videos that could be illegal in nature.

Flash drives and external hard drives are also good alternatives; as long as you don't store them in your house because it could burn down or be hit by a meteor. Of course, storing them at someone else's house could result in the same - or theft. You could get a safety deposit box at a bank. Maybe one of those really cool ones with the fingerprint scans.

[KayBratt]

Jilly Cooper once left the only copy of her manuscript in the back of a taxi. She never got it back and had to begin the entire book from scratch (must have been before computers)   Don't know if I would have been able to do that.

On that note, I'm feeling much better.

 

[melissafmiller]

Oh, Kay! Hope the edits go quickly and smoothly for you.  I cannot tell you how many times, on the day a brief is due to be filed, some attorney on the case will do that whole edit an email attachment thing without first saving it. Then we have to all go through the stages of grief until whoever did it finally accepts that the edits are gone. Poof.

[MaryMcDonald]

I feel for you. Ugh. And here I was ticked because I lost a few edits. I was working on it while at work (first mistake!) and had hit 'save' several times, but my computer froze--which it never does! I had to do a hard re-boot and of course, lost the most recent edits. My biggest problem is finding out which ones saved and which didn't. Luckily, I have four betas and an editor, and these were the fixes from the very first beta, so I should get them covered eventually.