The almost lost stories!

I learned a very fundamental lesson in a very big way these past few weeks and fellow writer's don't make the same mistake!

Back in 2008 when I was going back to complete my last year of college I purchased a very nice Dell laptop.  I used it all the time for classes and homework, carrying it back and forth between campus and home but once school was over and I'd graduated the laptop transformed into the writing tool of choice.  The convenience of sitting in the same room as my husband or daughter and typing made my laptop indispensable!  I eventually ended up with 3 story starts on there (like a chapter or two of book ideas/starters), 1 completed rough draft, 1 completed final draft, and this years Nano project. Now keep in mind the completed manuscripts are around 50,000- 90,000 words a piece.

One day I thought to myself, "hey you should back up" and I did back up to Dropbox.  Smart right?  You'd think so.  Well rewind to about 2 weeks ago. I'd just gotten the kiddo ready for bed and went to sit down at the laptop when every writer's worst nightmare happened.  I turned it on and the screen stayed black.  "No! No!"  I banged on the keyboard hoping it would bring the computer back to life but despite whirring and sounding like it was booting up it wouldn't do anything.  I already knew that the work I had done over the past 2 weeks was on that machine since I hadn't backed up recently but then I went to my other computer only to discover that Dropbox didn't get all of the files that I had tried to save on there.  I had about 2 years worth of stuff that was sitting on that laptop and only that laptop.

Long story short I ran the computer over to my very tech-savvy brother in law who managed to get my files off of the hard drive so I am no longer sick to my stomach about the files, I have my work back (hallelujah!) but the computer is still dead.  We're looking at options to get it going again but I learned a very important lesson.  Back up your work!  Every time, all the time!  Don't make a mistake like I did.  I was very lucky to get back what I had but it will never happen again.  I've got a jump drive now and am looking into external hard drives!