Wednesday 8 July 2015

A story about how irresponsible I am.

If you're on here, wondering why I haven't written about Tellan--or anything--in ages, then I’m very sorry. I messed up. 


I entered Tellan in a competition in Feb (which I will talk about in another post). Then, after entering did one really awesome, final tweak of the entire MS, including a shiny new first chapter (yes, after entering, I edited the book...). I then decided to put Tellan aside and wait for the competition critiques before editing or querying it.

My hard-drive imploded.

It didn't just ‘break,’ it self-destructed. It sent everything on it to the world of the irretrievable. 

Luckily I had back-ups. Right?   

They also imploded...




I can only conclude that some horrible, malicious, writer-hunting demon decided to really ruin my year. For some, ungodly, reason, the 'Tellan' folder was not on my back up device… or online. And for some even more ungodly of ungodly reasons, the Tellan files I'd emailed to myself were also gone (my phone was deleting my emails, which I had noticed, and not addressed…).

What a mess... 

In sheer frustration I shelved Tellan and worked on another WIP for a while, telling myself that I would find a way to recover my long-lost edits.



(*book*)


At some point I remembered a fateful day in April, when I was sitting in my living room reading—and tweaking—the new first chapter. I looked up and saw my keys and a flashdrive, sitting on the counter and thought, “oh, maybe I should chuck these files on that? Just in case things go tits-up?” But then I slunk lower into sofa, and, in a pool of laziness, didn’t do it. WHY, dammit!

I have now, after several months and a lot of heartache, re-written the shiny new chapter one... Which, of course, will never be as good as I remember it. 

So yeah, make sure your back-ups are like, working… and then back everything up again. And again. And again. And again.