Five Things I've Learned since Killing My Hard Drive

So...

At this point there has been no progress with my hard drive. But I'm not the type of person to dwell on a problem. You just have to make the best of things and move forward, right?

I've installed a new hard drive in my computer, because strangely enough, the laptop runs perfectly fine; only the drive was damaged. I spent Sunday and today reloading software and trying to finish up a design project for a client. I grabbed a jump drive to copy some files from my husband's computer and had a lovely surprise: a copy of my novel, Secret of Undine, from early August.

I almost cried.

Even though I was trying to move on, the horror of losing my book was eating away at me in the background. I'd made changes since August, but I thought the most recent version I had saved was much older. It totally made my day to find that file!

So what have I learned about writing?

1. Bad things happen to good people. You've heard it before but sometimes it's hard to remember. Much as you love these characters you've created, you can't protect them. They have to suffer pain, sometimes a lot of pain. Especially because sometimes...
2. A desperate situation can open up a new direction. Not only do you discover what your character is made of, you get to try out new possibilities that you may never have considered otherwise. Which leads me to...
3. Consider more than one option. And don't just consider it. Follow through with it. Write a few scenes or a chapter to see where it leads. You may not use it, or it might provide the hook that was missing. Since I thought I'd lost everything, I started jotting down notes for a new book. And that's not a bad thing :)
   
4. Look for the silver lining. Every story has one whether it's fiction or your life. Even if you're not writing a completely happy ending, hope is the stuff that dreams are made of. All you need is a glimmer.
5. Get it down and back it up. I now have a 500 GB external drive to back up everything. And even though there isn't much on my laptop right now, it's backed up. Call me paranoid. Whatever. I'm NEVER going to torture myself this way again. Getting your story down is only part of the answer. Save it somewhere, more than one somewhere!

I guess these weren't things that I learned. More like things that I needed to be reminded of. Hopefully my folly will save you some heartache down the road. If your files aren't backed up, DO IT NOW! Stop reading right now and go back up everything on your hard drive. Believe me, you'll be happy you did.

And one last word of advice: if you're going to drop your laptop, do it when the computer is off. Apparently I wouldn't have damaged the hard drive as much if it was sleeping or off. If only I'd known...