Was working on this for a month now and had reached past the mid point of the novel, when suddenly my Macbook started to freeze up and slow down. It's old, and this isn't abnormal, so I waited. Suddenly, my entire document is blank, but it still says how many pages and words etc. at the bottom, so I figure it's just a graphical glitch. I wait, but it doesn't come back. I close the document, and it doesn't give me a save prompt. When I re-open it, the entire thing is a string of numbers. No words. Gone. I check the autorecovery folder for Word, and literally everything else I've ever written is backed up there, EXCEPT THIS. I haven't backed it up anywhere else because I never thought it would be an issue. SO my first book, 70,000 words and not even finished -- is now gone. And I want to break something.
Oh man, that's terrible. Have you spoken to an IT expert yet? Hopefully something can still be retrieved.
Tell me about it. I'm crushed! My cover's almost done and I was so excited to start getting people to read this. My buddy is helping me, he's in IT, and I'm posting everywhere I can for help. So far nothing's worked
That is a nightmare. It is also one of the reasons my closest friend get emailed the story I'm writing at any given time chapter by chapter, he is my back-up file.
Good luck, I hope you recover it. Think about reaching out to a professional comp repair service too. There are many different flavors and skills in IT
Thanks for all the support, guys! The real heartbreaker, is Word 2011 saves autorecovery copies of your files, and I have literally everything on their BUT THIS! GAAAHHH! I'm still trying some things w/my tech buddies, but it's looking dire. I may start a new thread charting my progress though if anyone's interested LOL. A journey within my journey, I feel like the character in my book. But I'd rather honestly fight a horde of skeletons and the Necromancer like he does, than have to mess with my Macbook.
Very tough news, and I hope your IT friends are able to recover your 70,000 words. A positive thing in posting this, is that it's a reminder for writers to always back up their works. Tech failure can occur at any moment.
Save early, save often. And always back up your work in at least three separate places. Really hope you manage to save it. I think I'd shoot myself.
I'm almost done with speedrunner. Hows bewk 2 coming along? *slides you some cookies under the table for a copy* jk jk
Going back and forth in editing right now. Taking way longer than I wanted tbh, but I want it to be better than the first one because I'm not happy about a lot of stuff with the original. Fingers crossed for an end of the month release, if not it'll be not much longer than that. <3
