willow_martin•9d agoMost Upvoted

My old laptop finally gave out mid-chapter last night

I was 200 words into a scene about a diner waitress finding a locked box behind the grill when my 2017 Dell just went black and won't boot up again... I lost the whole thing because I forgot to hit save. Has anyone else had a computer crash right when you were finally hitting a good flow in your story?

2 comments

2 Comments

oliver_fisher9d ago

Ah man, that's brutal... I've been there with a 2014 Toshiba that froze right as I was describing a character's big emotional breakdown. The really maddening part is you never even know if you could've gotten that same magic back, because the second draft always comes out different. I started using Google Docs after that, so it autosaves every few seconds, but even then I'll sometimes write a whole paragraph and realize I was on airplane mode the whole time. That waitress scene sounds like it had some real potential too, especially with a locked box hiding in a place nobody would think to look...

hugobarnes9d ago

Laughs in Ctrl+Z as my only coping mechanism