Writers' horror stories or turning points or both

[Watcher55]

I went three pages deep and I didn't see a similar thread and I was wondering how many y'all (yes, I hang my hat in TN) have ever been shaken so hard it changed the way you look at your work. Here's mine.

I was doing the coffee/on-line puzzle thing this morning and I moved a pile of papers and found the flash drive I never should have misplaced because its sole purpose is to back up my novel files, and I remembered why I got it.

About five years ago (I was teaching at the time and we were on summer break), I was still researching and just fiddling with my novel, I think I had about 50 good pages and closer to 500 pages in my “useful trash” folder. Don’t even ask how many pages of research I had amassed; I’ll just say it took me six years. I had two computers and thought I was OK, until the hard drive on my laptop crashed the day after the one on my desktop did! “OH S---! NO, NO, NO! This can’t be happening!” I’m sure more than one neighbor peered out the window or stood on the back porch.

Long story no shorter, I was angry, then I was frantic, then I was sad, so I set my hand to something; I cleaned the shed. It wasn’t really a shed, it was a closet that opened onto the back deck but that was where I was keeping the stacks of paper for a recycling project I was working on at school. I remembered I had recently printed out a blue-pencil manuscript and it was buried somewhere in one of the four 2 ½ foot tall stacks of printer paper. JOY. ELATION. Vindication, proof that I should stop fiddling and get on with it. An hour later the closet looked worse. An hour after that I had a new computer, a new flash drive and a whole summer.

[Holly]

Good horror story. I once saved 80,000 words to a flash drive the day before a laptop went belly up with the blue screen of death.

Now I don't bother. I email my writing to my gmail account every day. It's there in two seconds. Yes, I also put it on a flash drive, but not as often. And I can't lose Google under a pile of laundry.

[sbs_mjc1]

I use an online drop-box to store both my writing and my thesis.

[sierramcconnell]

I work in IT so I get used to having the ear.

I can hear when a hard drive is about to go to the sweet sleep, and so I backed everything up, 48 hours before she surrendered once two or three years ago. I have an FTP server and a website, but it helps that I only lost eight hours of work on image cleaning that had nothing to do with my writing. Whew.

I back up to two flash drives, the FTP, work, and my home.

I'm not paranoid. I've just seen things. Terrible things.

When they say hard drive crash, they mean crash. Because that arm goes BANG inside the wheels. It's beautiful, and makes nice jewelery.

[cough]

A turning point, I think would be a conversation I had once at work, in the dead of night when it was slow (not that we were the busiest of departments). We were talking about death, and how characters sometimes just have to die to make the story more real. It came about because of the Harry Potter books, I think this was in 2007. And I'll always remember the conversation because before then I hated to kill anyone. Everyone lived, everyone was happy.

I think my books would have been seriously flawed had that been the case now. I kill a lot of people. I maim them. I have wars and bloody fights and torture.

It's so much fun to be dark. I have a thirteen year old who loves to torture and a lord who loves her because of it.

Had that conversation not happened, I would be writing happy happy romance novels today.

Thank God for those guys, especially Jake and Dez.

[Margo]

I have a non-tech related one. I wrote a novel. I sent it to a major publisher (back in the olden days when more of them would allow this). They responded with a letter saying that particular imprint was closed to submissions. A couple of years passed. I got rid of the novel. A few months later, the publishing house sent a letter asking to see the ms. :)

I stopped getting rid of old ms.s after that.

[J. T. SHEA]

You went three pages deep into the Bransforums, Watcher 55? How brave of you! On the fourth level you will find things that defy the descriptive powers of even H. P. Lovecraft!

My father had a lifelong fear of fire after escaping a burning house in the WW2 London Blitz. Fifty years later he started writing a memoir of his life. Then he started worrying more about the manuscript getting burned in a house-fire than himself. THAT'S the mark of a writer!

I have two laptops, four older desktops, an external hard-drive, about ten flashdrives, dozens of old 3.5 inch and 5.5 inch diskettes, and thousands of pages printed out. Now I worry about WW3 or a cosmic collision. Yes! Not only could a meteorite destroy all life on Earth, it might destroy J. T. Shea's manuscripts!

[sierramcconnell]

You went three pages deep into the Bransforums, Watcher 55? How brave of you! On the fourth level you will find things that defy the descriptive powers of even H. P. Lovecraft!

My father had a lifelong fear of fire after escaping a burning house in the WW2 London Blitz. Fifty years later he started writing a memoir of his life. Then he started worrying more about the manuscript getting burned in a house-fire than himself. THAT'S the mark of a writer!

I have two laptops, four older desktops, an external hard-drive, about ten flashdrives, dozens of old 3.5 inch and 5.5 inch diskettes, and thousands of pages printed out. Now I worry about WW3 or a cosmic collision. Yes! Not only could a meteorite destroy all life on Earth, it might destroy J. T. Shea's manuscripts!

When I think about death, there are two things I worry about. My babies (being my dolls I've worked so hard on) and my stories. Because they're the two things that cannot exist without me.

So I totally feel that. XD

[Watcher55]

You went three pages deep into the Bransforums, Watcher 55? How brave of you! On the fourth level you will find things that defy the descriptive powers of even H. P. Lovecraft!

My father had a lifelong fear of fire after escaping a burning house in the WW2 London Blitz. Fifty years later he started writing a memoir of his life. Then he started worrying more about the manuscript getting burned in a house-fire than himself. THAT'S the mark of a writer!

I have two laptops, four older desktops, an external hard-drive, about ten flashdrives, dozens of old 3.5 inch and 5.5 inch diskettes, and thousands of pages printed out. Now I worry about WW3 or a cosmic collision. Yes! Not only could a meteorite destroy all life on Earth, it might destroy J. T. Shea's manuscripts!

Very funny! Only now you've given me something else to worry about. Sigh - I can't say I didn't ask for it.