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Deleted 60 pages of my novel draft by hitting the wrong key combo
Last Thursday I was three months into a rough draft and had about 60 pages done, all in one file on my laptop. I went to save and somehow hit the shortcut that overwrote my backup instead, so the old version ate the new one. I sat there for a bit, then rewrote the last chapter from memory just so the day wasn't a total loss. Now I want to turn this into a prompt: what's the worst thing that ever happened to your draft, and what did you do to get the words back?
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logan_schmidt11d ago
The "overwrote my backup instead" part is what gets me, because that is the exact thing that happened to a buddy of mine last year. He had a whole draft on a USB stick and a copy on his desktop, and he dragged the wrong file over the right one at 2 in the morning. Both versions were suddenly the old one and about 80 pages of new stuff just gone. He called me sounding like someone had died, then spent the next week rebuilding it from old emails and scraps he had sent to his writing group. He swears the rewrite turned out better, but he also now saves three copies in three places like a paranoid person.
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