Triumph Through Triple-Think
Jul. 17th, 2009 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_pretentiousThank goodness, the data recovery worked.
(Yes, I'd been backing everything up, every day, but it turns out things can still go wrong. Which things went wrong is not the interesting part. Trust me.)
By the time I finally sent the damaged hard drive off to the data recovery people, I'd scrounged up recent-enough copies of most of my fiction. Still, I'd lost one pass of polishing on the Big Book, some very preliminary works in progress, and... 50,000 words of the Stisele book. That last was the worst to lose.
It took a year of tutoring to save up enough in the business account--beyond my commitment to the monthly household bottom line--to pay for data recovery, so for a year I've had that lost half-a-book hanging over my head.
Now for the interesting part:
I have that doomed feeling I used to get in grad school, which, weirdly enough, bodes well. The bone-deep belief that nothing I do will make any difference almost always indicates I'm about to pass a major milestone. I remember standing in the office of the Very Last Dean, waiting for her to sign the Very Last Form, and believing even then that I would never graduate, because nine years of working flat out had never previously resulted in graduating. I get the impression this is a common form of psychological scarring among academics and ex-academics.
Today, opening the FedEx package of disks of my rescued files filled me with a sense of absolute futility, a certainty that having back all 100,000 words of the Stisele rough draft does not matter--none of the big New York print publishers will ever want that story.
Aha! Victory must be nigh!
Sometimes living in my head is like being a triple agent in a cold war espionage farce.
(Yes, I'd been backing everything up, every day, but it turns out things can still go wrong. Which things went wrong is not the interesting part. Trust me.)
By the time I finally sent the damaged hard drive off to the data recovery people, I'd scrounged up recent-enough copies of most of my fiction. Still, I'd lost one pass of polishing on the Big Book, some very preliminary works in progress, and... 50,000 words of the Stisele book. That last was the worst to lose.
It took a year of tutoring to save up enough in the business account--beyond my commitment to the monthly household bottom line--to pay for data recovery, so for a year I've had that lost half-a-book hanging over my head.
Now for the interesting part:
I have that doomed feeling I used to get in grad school, which, weirdly enough, bodes well. The bone-deep belief that nothing I do will make any difference almost always indicates I'm about to pass a major milestone. I remember standing in the office of the Very Last Dean, waiting for her to sign the Very Last Form, and believing even then that I would never graduate, because nine years of working flat out had never previously resulted in graduating. I get the impression this is a common form of psychological scarring among academics and ex-academics.
Today, opening the FedEx package of disks of my rescued files filled me with a sense of absolute futility, a certainty that having back all 100,000 words of the Stisele rough draft does not matter--none of the big New York print publishers will ever want that story.
Aha! Victory must be nigh!
Sometimes living in my head is like being a triple agent in a cold war espionage farce.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-18 02:18 pm (UTC)2. I am packaging back drafts for you.
3. I know this feeling: nothing will shift the milestone I am about to pass. I may be afraid, or anxious, or happy, but the milestone is about to be passed. I am there too, with this book.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-18 03:28 pm (UTC)Doomsayer
That's hilarious!
Date: 2009-07-18 06:12 pm (UTC)The Doomed
no subject
Date: 2009-07-18 06:11 pm (UTC)And, could I get an electronic copy of the big book, last polish pass? :) Mine seems to have wondered off as well.
DropBox
Date: 2009-07-18 07:05 pm (UTC)https://www.getdropbox.com/
What it does is create a folder on your computer and any files or sub-folders you put in there are automatically backed up to the internet. It's free up to 2 GB and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
In addition to this automatic backup system, it's great if you work on more than one computer since updating a file on one computer will automatically update the file on the internet -- and then the software will also automatically update the file on your other computer.
I simply keep all my writing in the Dropbox folder and that way I have two backups -- one on the internet and one on my laptop.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-19 01:51 pm (UTC)On the other hand, it worked! This feeling of impending doom as a sign of imminent success is interesting - I have to think about that. I feel impending doom a lot - maybe I am closer to a brilliant success than I realize... ;-)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-20 01:50 pm (UTC)Been off of LJ for a while; if there was a previous post about data loss, I missed it. Glad to hear you got most of it back.
I've been worrying endlessly until last week about how I hadn't backed things up recently, and my computer was slowing down (we recently installed FiOS), but last week I finally found a small flash drive that had been missing and backed up only the things I thought were most important, because when I tried to back up everything online it said there wasn't enough room. I do want to hear about the things that can go wrong, because I want to find out if I can guard against them.
You've mentioned the feeling of doom that portends a milestone before. I think I told you this, but David Bowie talked about a similar thing, where he gets really nervous whenever he's about to break new ground, specifically because it is new ground. Although, at the time, he was talking about Tin Machine.
Aaargh!
Date: 2009-07-20 07:05 pm (UTC)Re: Aaargh!
Date: 2009-07-21 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 03:55 am (UTC)The way you psych yourself out is also entertaining...hopefully that feeling of doom will translate into great success sometime soon.