As I type this, two ginormous generators on an equal number of gooseneck trailers across the street roar so loud I’m forced to wear the ear protection usually reserved for shooting large firearms. On the backs of those same trailers are four five-hundred-gallon tanks full of water and some foamy solution designed to remove paint from brick.
The house across the street is the target of my ire, along with the steady hiss of pressurized water spewing from the ends of two power washing wands wielded by a pair of very wet workers. It’s part of an ongoing saga of renovations over there, and as John Gilstrap can attest from the last time he visited over a year ago, the residence in question looks like someone with no sense style had been watching wayyyy too much HGTV.
I think the house was a front for nefarious businesses. Honestly, I believe they were cooking meth over there. Strange things went on behind those closed doors after we moved here five years ago. I seldom saw the same people more than a couple of times in the four years after we bought this house. Strangers came and went. The blinds were always closed, and it usually looked as if no one lived there.
Then it sold, and the new owners brought in 30-yard dumpsters, and stripped the interior down to the studs. Ignoring the architectural styles of the neighborhood, they remodeled everything into some ghastly ultra-modern Scandinavian design with a wide glass front door the size you’d find at one end of a car dealership’s showroom.
Without approval from the HOA, they sprayed the exterior bright white, making it the only painted residence in our neighborhood of naturally colored brick. It stood out like a sore thumb, required Ray Bans to look at it in the bright summer stun, and still hasn’t sold eighteen months later, because the HOA (and this is the only time I will give them props) put a lean on the house until certain conditions were met. Namely, strip off all that garish paint.
That’s what they’re doing right now. Power-washing the paint off a 5,000′ two-story house brick by brick.
The noise and aggravation is one more thing to endure this month, and this leads us to the root of today’s rant and recommendation.
Through this summer, I hammered out the first 40,000 words on my latest western horror novel, Buck’s Lament, and on a creative roll, retreated to the Cabin for a week by myself to gain another fifteen. Coming home, I went to town on the downhill side of the manuscript (Texan lingo meaning to do something in a detailed and enthusiastic way).
On Monday, words flowed into the laptop from my fingertips. The story moved forward with startling twists as the plot continued to develop on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. During those four days, all those subconscious connections James Scott Bell was talking about a few days ago here on Killzone found themselves and i wrote with feverish glee at how well it read.
Those who know me can tell you that I don’t outline, so it was all stream of consciousness, and it worked!
Then I stuck on some bit of western history, and went to the Google for the information. Typing key words into the search engine, I found a safe link I’d used before and hit Enter.
A dozen screens popped up, one over the other so fast I couldn’t read them, before it froze up and refused to respond. On top of that, a warning came up that I didn’t quite understand. Trying not to panic, I dialed up the makers of my laptop. For the next hour, we discussed my dilemma and technical support finally suggested that I should shut everything down and reboot this infernal machine.
It worked, and all came back…except for what I’d written the last four days. Seven. Thousand. Words. They were just gone.
But that can’t happen! My iDrive automatically backs up to the Cloud. It should all be there.
Sick at my stomach, I again reached out to tech support and the helpful expert figuratively shrugged. “I can’t tell you what happened.”
I called a friend who lives on computers. He came over and three hours later, delivered the bad news. “For some reason, you were disconnected from the Cloud. Nothing has backed up since Sunday.”
With a sick feeling in my stomach, I swallowed down a wave of despair. “So it really is all gone.”
“I’m afraid so.” He went to work, beating back all the electronic gremlins he could find and got me going again, but for days afterward I couldn’t make myself type a word. All those descriptions, the twists, and especially the Pulitzer prize-winning dialog, was gone.
Following those twenty-year-old footsteps in my own imaginary ashes when an electronic hiccup took my entire first novel, I spent the next week re-writing those seven thousand words from memory. I’m sure I missed many details, but the scenes were still fresh in my mind. Maybe these new pages look like the ones floating around somewhere in an electronic heaven, but I’ll never know.
I wish I could tie my troubles in a gunny sack and throw them over the edge, but that’s just the line from a Guy Clark song.
So, the purpose of this discussion is to urge you all not to rely on just one backup method, no matter how good they say it is. I won’t go into the myriad methods to save your work, because I can’t tell you what’s best.
An exterior hard drive?
Had one. It failed.
Download to a thumb drive.
Check. Did that, but it also failed and when I bought this machine, they said the Cloud would never let me down. I know it wasn’t the electronic netherworld, it was a strange disconnect between this infernal machine and that little storm cloud icon at the top of this screen that I never would have imagined.
One of the support techs I spoke to on the phone said to use Time Machine. “You’ll never lose your work again.”
Probably should, but I don’t have the time or inclination to learn more technology. Then again, that’s what they said about the connection between this device and the Cloud.
My grown daughters insist I should use Google Docs. They say it will never fail. I’ll give that a look once I’m finished with this manuscript, but not right now.
I save as I go again, even though it’s supposed to do that for me, and at the end of the day I send the entire manuscript to myself through email. That one has never failed me.
I hope this never happens to any one of you, and I also mean the generators that I’m beginning to think will be outside my office window until the end of September.
—
I use MS OneDrive. It automatically saves my files, as long as I am connected to the cloud. I also use Scrivener (PC Version) which automatically saves my work to my laptop (and thus, to the OneDrive) as I type. I don’t even have to hit SAVE in Scrivener. And I back up regularly to an external drive.
So far, so good (I say this while knocking on wood).
A quick story though. Back in the wild west of computing, I updated my video driver, and my computer went blank. Nothing. Just a black screen. And my novel was on it (no Cloud in those days).
I was in despair, but I had an idea. I rebooted, and when the computer settled down and the black screen reappeared, I started pressing buttons. Manually, and literally in the dark, I opened the file explorer, successfully navigated to where my novel lived, saved it, and copied it to a floppy. And if worked! I was never so relieved, and I have never attempted to upgrade a video driver since.
I understand! I never do updates on my own. I’ll screw something up. I can barely find where I save documents, so I leave it to the pros.
I feel your pain. Thinking everything was going to the cloud when I logged in on my other computer discovered nothing had been saved on either.
I’ve learned to look at the icon at the top of the screen now. I take nothing for granted anymore.
Horror story! Living across the street from Breaking Bad is terrible enough, but losing 7k words. Ack!
I use Time Machine to auto backup every hour to an external hard drive. It’s a simple app. You set it and forget it…until you need it. I also back up to the cloud.
I’ll look into it and let my computer friend set it up. The only problem is I can’t ask him to do all that work for nothing, so it usually costs one big fat bill every time he comes by….and lots of beer.
Rev, been there, done that, cried those tears.
When you go back over those recreated pages, I hope your subconscious that helped you the first time will pop up more reminders of crackling dialogue and startling plot twists. The info is still in your own internal hard drive, your brain.
Time Machine is super easy–plug in an external hard drive and click the clock icon at the top right side of the screen. It may start automatically–mine does. Or it might prompt you to “back up now.” Click that and it does its thing.
I save on thumb drives daily and time machine to an external drive weekly, plus I periodically email the doc to myself. Doesn’t hurt to email to a friend also to have the info in a different physical location.
Aside from saving to my hard drive, I also print a physical copy. If the hard drive ever bites it, all I’d have to do is re-type it into the computer. Time consuming and paper intensive, but piece of mind is intact.
I’d print, but I’m so random that I can’t just do the pages for that day. I might jump back a few chapters and add something, or change names, or any number of things buried deep in the manuscript.
However, the other day something triggered the ink jet printer to fire up without my knowledge. I run manuscripts through the laster printer. I came in and the ink jet was out of paper, with about two hundred pages scattered in the floor because the tray wasn’t out.
sigh
My old grandmother always said not to put all of your eggs in one basket. The old folks were almost always right.
I’m so sorry for your loss. If you’re like me, the rewriting from memory is never quite the same. Unfortunately, Time Machine works only with Macs, not PCs, and I’m not going there. My son, who worked for Apple, has tried for years to convert me, but I had to use both for my ten years as business manager of our school district, and never developed an affinity for Apple. We have their phones and iPads, and love them, but even the fact that no one bothers to write a virus for their computers won’t persuade me. At the school, I backed up to a thumb drive attached to my car’s key ring and took it home with me, but I think Terry’s habit of printing each day’s work is probably the best idea. House fires are rare, and computer glitches are common.
I moved from PCs because of virus and backup issues, assured that Macs have few problems. The MacBook air has been a headache from day one. However, I’m writing this on the old Mac desktop and it’s working fine.
Remember, glitches aren’t common, they’re epidemic.
Why wash off paint? Why not just repaint? Seems like it would waste a whole lot less water that way.
For my writing, I use Google docs and email myself the manuscript periodically. Sometimes save to thumb drive. When I’ve fully drafted I print out a copy. As someone mentioned above, at least then all you’d have to do is retype it in the event of losing your e-version. But printing out your manuscript can’t be the only thing, at least for me, since I’m forever tinkering with my manuscript.
Our neighborhood is all brick houses. They’re common in this part of Texas, and the HOA doesn’t allow any painted exteriors.
You’re right about printing out all the time. I covered that above. The email idea has been a standard for me, and will continue.
Wow. A cautionary tale for folks like me. Thanks for sharing. My tech support (husband) insists on using the Cloud, which apparently isn’t as fail safe as I thought. I used to print everything out, being old school, but the cost of paper, printers, ink, lack of physical storage space, and the questionable environmental ethics stop me from doing it now. I too write on a PC (to tech support’s everlasting horror) so I’ll seek other options with him forthwith!
It wasn’t the Cloud that was at fault, though. It was my connection that was somehow disrupted. But then again, the Cloud is just a gazillion computers running together, so there’s always the possibility of failure. If that happens, though, a manuscript will be the least of our worries as a global crash would likely follow, in my opinion.
To quote the great philosopher Roseann Rosannadanna, “It’s always something.” My sympathy on both the power washers and the computer crap.
And they’re back out there today…..
We had police action across the street during my writing session Thursday afternoon, as a room mate of the home owner was evicted. However, it all went very smoothly, perhaps in part because the three sheriff’s deputies were all big officers. One of them even played a little fetch with our neighbor’s adorable eight month old black lab while the former roommate’s departure took place. Needless to say, that interfered with my writing. But, in the overall scheme of things, I can write later. Doesn’t hold a candle to the disruption of the momental pressure wash across the road from your house.
I’ve lost scenes before thanks to computer glitches and agree that having multiple ways to save your work is vital. Sorry you had to recreate so much.
Police activity is fodder for future projects. I once had to rely on a sheriff’s deputy to resolve a situation and he was wonderful!
The recreation is past, and I’ve moved on, but there were several days there I considered a career in power washing houses instead.
My sincere condolences, Reavis. I once decided to “clean up” my computer after half a bottle of wine. Disaster.
As folks say, sheeyit happens, y’all.
Zelda the wonder cat decided to walk across my keyboard one time and crashed my computer. It took about three hours to get back to where I was before I started.
Biggest problem I ever had was one time somehow I downloaded a corrupted file. It crashed everything. So there I am at the credit union doing some non banking and sniveling about my disaster and the teller, this slip of a girl says “Oh. Start it in safe mode, You’ll be able to fix it when you run your antibiotic applications”
It worked. Did I ever feel like a fool. Saved about three years worth of work and client files.
Now to figure out what it was that I used to save everything. I guess I better get serious about saving stuff.
I back up to the cloud, but I also save a zip file from Scrivener to Dropbox (free version) for that just in case crap where nothing uploads to the cloud–which doesn’t always work. I have iffy internet so I don’t trust “the cloud” since it won’t up load if your internet flips off and on. After every session, I save that zip file. Once I’ve opened and added to it, I delete the old one before adding the new one.
I’ve had to use that zip file more than once.