After rescuing all my four JR21 books from the waste compacter of Blurb's spring-clean, I was feeling understandably pleased with the prospect of all four files now being saved from corruption or deletion and reformatted to look the same like a fresh minty box set.
Yep, contentment swept over me like a bag of Haribo, but alas the gremlins hadn't quite finished!
Laid up yesterday in my sick bed nursing a bad dose of lurgy and Vick's menthol lotion on my chest, I kept myself mentally busy writing a short story. Open to innovation I tried a Speech to Text app for the first time and happily warbled away with not a care in the world. Unfortunately after about five hundred words the app simply deleted the content! I should have heeded this obvious bad omen.
Fed up with innovation I switched back to typing on my phone, using draft Gmail as I always do.
Over several hours the story progressed and progressed, paragraphs being regularly saved and before I knew it I had a fully formed tale on my hands of about 5,000 words, about 10 pages and just short of the grand finale.
I was pleased with it and it was at this point I aimed my finger for 'save' once more but for some odd reason, which I can now only attribute to my cold, I pressed the 'discard' tab instead!
Now, if like me, you thought discarding a draft was like deleting onr, you'd be wrong and disastrously so.
Discarding a draft is like instantly shredding it and feeding the strips to the Pit of Sarlac, where they are dissolved forever.
After frantically searching my trash, junk and spam folders, only to find nothing, the terrible realisation began to dawn on me that I had lost my work for good.
Speech to text was just the opening act. The discard button, fatally positioned immediately below save, was the main event and no matter how much I tried the various desperate measures other discarded victims listed online, my story was gone.
With the bittersweet tang of Vicks vapour rub reddening my wide eyes I laid back and submitted completely to the abject misery of technology's wrath.
Have you lost anything important readers?
☠️
I had a near disaster in Cyprus recently, during my daughters wedding. Happily snapping away with my camera for two weeks, capturing the event, the surroundings and the holiday proper, I got home and took the memory card out to review my work. On popping it into a reader, I discovered it was completely empty! Cue much cussing, wailing and gnashing of teeth, until I found a recovery program that I could use (without having to pay a small fortune for either) and I managed to resurrect 80% of the photographs. After hastily backing them up, I re-used the card a few days later and it did it again! Its now been confined to the shelf while I use another device. Technology, who needs it! Bill
ReplyDeleteDarn it, that was close Bill. Well done. Online a Hex programm is described for retrieving discarded Gmail drafts but I don't trust it or myself. I might bring the whole creaking system down!
Deletealways best to steer away from magic and the occult Woodsy
Delete"Just put the lotion in F#####g basket!"
ReplyDeleteHa ha, Buffalo Bill strikes again!
DeleteEvery writer's worst nightmare! I never write anything without saving it every few minutes or so, cuz I've been down that terrible road before. With your amazingly fertile mind, i am sure more amazing stories will reveal themselves to you anon. SFZ
ReplyDeleteData wrangling is the bane of my life!
ReplyDeleteSo much nicer to hold something in your hands...
I know what you mean Looey.
DeleteI have had some corrupted photographs, and lost some text. The worst was several pages of emails once. But not a whole story. That must have been a terrible shock.
ReplyDeleteIt was. You must save your mag articles well Paul. Is that on your hard drive?
Delete