What I love about computers and cloud services and all things auto saved, is that I no longer have to remember to hit save, so if my laptop or iPad crashes in the middle of hours and hours, weeks of edits even, its already saved and can be recovered and I can work from anywhere on any device. It’s amazing, until its not!
So as a struggling writer one of the biggest things is finding the time to actually write. Amongst all the other daily things you have to do, like work, chores, going down that google rabbit hole or reels maybe, somewhere there needs to be time to write. Ok so writers can procrastinate a bit… But when you do manage to get in that zone, your first draft is long done and you are working on your final edits, you hope. and you get to the end and you can celebrate, right? I mean you used most of your vacation not at the beach, instead sitting in your hotel room, maybe on the balcony if you are lucky, but you finished it and you celebrate at the bar, finally enjoy the last few days and then come home ready to prepare to get it published, or so you thought.
Well guess what?! You open your document when you wake up all refreshed, still on that vacation high, only to find that the cloud says your last edits are dated two weeks earlier. So you try not to cry or scream or pull the last of your hair out, but its really hard not react like that screaming goat on the internet. Why or why did your cloud version not sync with the version on your home computer? Why, when you try to find the right version, did it choose to sync with the old one and now all versions on all systems and various clouds say the same two weeks earlier crap date? There really are no answers to these questions because now you have to decide one of two things. Do you spend hours with tech support on the phone, keep searching, keep trying restore or hitting the version history to find something that kept your edits? OR do you throw in the towel, hope you remember that golden version you had before when you were in the zone and writing like a mad woman? My answer, is looking more and more like its time to bit that proverbial bullet, not the silver one mind you that everyone says is great to bite, unless you are in fact a werewolf, then I do not recommend it, and just start from the old version and try again. Oh the joys of writing, this would be one of those fails, even if you can at least say, I did it once, I can edit it again, I still have to classify this one as #epic-fail #writers-life
~ Go write!