So, on the plus side, I had a really good writing day today. Got up and did some early morning writing, then followed it up by joining Angela Slatter for our regular Write Club. Net result: about 2,000 words. A whole chapter of the novella done, plus half of the second one finished.
On the downside, I lost my USB drive on the way home. I spent a couple of hours looking for it, went back to the grocery store where it most likely slipped free of my pocket, but I didn’t have any luck tracking it down. Which means it’s time to buy a new USB and restore things from back-up.
This is the second time I’ve lost a USB in 2014 – the first time happened back in March, right on the deadline for the first Flotsam novella, when I dropped Shifty Silas the laptop USB first and snapped it in two. I’m pretty good about back-ups, so I only lost about a week and a half’s work. Unfortunately, that week and a half was time I’d taken off of work, which meant I’d spent a lot more time writing than normal, so it took me almost a month to make up what I’d lost.
This time the damage isn’t quite so bad. My last back-up was Monday morning – would have been more recent, but for a hiccup with the back-up system I intended to fix this afternoon – so the only information I’ve lost is…well, the work done on Frost, the second Flotsam novella, and a whole bunch of notes about the next Aster book.
I’m starting to wonder if this series is cursed.
If there’s one refrain writers should take to heart, it’s this: you do not back up enough.
It doesn’t matter how often you do it, or how recently you made copies, you haven’t done it enough. Things will always go wrong when you least expect it, and your systems are only as effective as they are at the weakest point. For me, that weak point is the absence of automated systems is Thursdays, when I spend a day writing on Shifty Silas the laptop instead of the desktop, Odin, which has a back-up drive permanently attached.
