Disaster! 15th June, 2012
So today i am exhausted. It’s been a week of LONG nights trying to knock book three into shape. I tentatively LOVE the way the book is shaping up buy I have no distance from it and it’s possible only parts are good. But I love my hero and heroine so that’s a plus.
But disaster struck today. It’s already a couple of days overdue for my editor so I was feeling the pressure and sat down this morning to give it a good polish. With two kids home from school that was never going to go according to plan, but surprisingly they did okay – understanding that mummy was working and took care of themselves for the most part. The trouble came when I decided to send my ms to my friend who reads all my work for me and forgot to hit send. Somehow I must have opened the attached document and then started working on it. And the edits were going spiffingly! I got in the zone, everyone was talking to each other and to me… terrific. Only – and you already know where this is headed – unbeknownst to me whenever i hit save the changes were saved to the attached file in the email. So I finish up, start closing everything down and notice my email to my friend. Not wanting to send her the wrong version of the novel I DELETE the attachment in the email and then notice this shifty little word doc still open. It’s the ms. The OLD ms without ANY OF THE CHANGES. Trying not to panic I search around for the “fresher” version of this document and after about five minutes the panic set in. There appears to be no copy saved to any rotten library or template or ANY BLOODY WHERE!
Seriously I nearly went faint (that could have just been lack of sleep) and had to remind myself that this wasn’t my fourth child who had just had a major accident. It was PART of a novel…. it took a full five minutes to get that perspective back, particularly since my youngest had been waiting to go out and buy new shoes all morning and asking him to wait one more second would have probably caused bloodshed. My own. So I’m in the car, my face is mottly with stress and I’m telling the boys that even though this “disaster” has occurred we are truly blessed. ‘It’s a sunny day” (there was sun, but hidden by clouds), “we’re all healthy” (well, we all have colds) “and we have each other” (this point is true). So “life’s good” I sing and really, it actually is. So I’m not complaining but… I had written such pretty words…
Wonderful. I look forward to hearing from you again!