Scary Stories by Poppy Gee

Writers should establish systems that create calm in the chaos that can come with creativity.

I recently lost 30K of a novel in progress and had to start again. What’s the biggest setback you’ve had in your writing, and how did you overcome it?

This is the one of worst things that can happen to a writer. It's a real life horror story that happened to my blogging colleague Eric, who wrote this question. Read his post here to see how he coped by writing his way through the despair.

I’ve lost sections of work, but never this amount. The paralysing fear of losing a substantial part of your novel looms over us, an ominous, inevitable spectre. 

Not long ago, on a rainy Friday morning, I was putting the finishing touches on a Powerpoint presentation that I would use to teach a crime fiction workshop. For no reason, my computer froze. Panic rising, I employed my repertoire of IT skills. This involved turning the computer off and on. Northing happened. I pressed escape. When that didn't work, I simultaneously held down control, shift, delete. Nothing I did made my laptop resume operation. I felt sick with fear. I only bought it last year, and I don’t have a back up computer. I needed the Powerpoint presentation, and the computer, for the weekend's class.

Using my phone, I googled laptop repair person near me. Fortunately, there was a guy up the road. I rang him, explained my crisis. He was available, and I drove straight there.

The man took my laptop out the back, disappearing behind a curtain. I sat in the waiting area for fifteen stressful minutes. He smiled when he emerged from behind the curtain and told me that my computer was fixed. Deeply relieved and grateful, I paid him $150. He reflected that it was not good that a new computer glitched like this. 

That night, my husband expressed doubt about the true nature of my computer’s glitch. He wondered what the man even did to my laptop. My husband claimed he could have fixed it himself and saved the money. (I don’t know if that’s true. He’s a builder, not an IT expert.)

Maybe the repair man had a secret and complex process to fix it, maybe the computer simply restarted by itself. I’ll never know. But what else do you do? We’re helpless in this scenario. 

My process of backup is to email the Word doc to myself once a week. If I’m making complex and tiny edits all over the manuscript, I email the m/s to myself several times a day. This is not a good process. Please refer to Gabriel Valjan’s excellent tips here on saving your work - there are better ways than emailing it yourself.

Losing your work is a horror story that no one wants to experience. It will happen at some point. Having a system of techniques to protect your work is the best way to minimise the damage and stress.