Don’t Call it a Comeback
Dealing with setbacks.
I screwed up and had a major setback. I got hyper- focused on producing words and forgot the cardinal rule of being a writer.
Always create a back-up.
I’m sure you see where this is going. I had this happen in November (while being behind in NaNoWriMo already) so you’d think I’d learn, but you’d be wrong.
I plugged my ninja-shaped flash drive into my laptop and got some randomness on the screen. Not the thing I wanted to see, but maybe I didn’t seat it properly into the port. Eject and re-insert. Now my drive comes up blank.
Twenty thousand plus words in my current novel plus an untold amount from various other projects gone in the blink of an eye.
And from previous experience, 100% unrecoverable, even by the guy who can get data off of everything. My ability to lose data should be in the forensic hall of fame.
I didn’t cry or scream, even though I wanted to. I did that the last time and I know better than to not back up my files. I have no one to blame but myself.
Instead, I pulled up my most recent back-up (from the beginning of July) and start piecing together where I am. Lucky for me, I’m a hand writer so I have most of my work in hard copy, but that’s a lot of retyping.
In addition to losing months worth of work in an instant, I spent a good portion of the beginning of the month sick so I haven’t been doing my 30 day challenge. I didn’t really set a time that I would do it everyday, so I’ve been very lax on getting my butt on the floor and doing it. I’m starting over and giving myself a set time to do it by everyday, so I should be good to go.
What do you do when you have a major setback to your plans?
Weekly Goals
Write 7K words: Failure. I spent the week playing catch up from my weekend in the woods and finding exactly what parts of my story needed to be retyped.
Sew 10 dice bags: Failure.
Read one book: Failure. I’m sensing a theme this week.
Go to class: Success.
Go to the gym twice: Success.
