When I write a book, I customarily have three copies of a manuscipt at any one time, for safety's sake: one on my laptop at home, one on my external hardrive, and one on my work computer. I try to keep all three up-to-date, so that if one fails, I have two others.
The last week, I've started to have issues with the external hardrive when it's attached to my laptop, but up to now I've been able to iron out the kinks. Today I'm looking a situation that makes me extremely nervous.
I wrote a lot on "Celluloid" over the weekend, around 40 pages, which represents hours and hours of writing and includes the climax of the story and a lot of other good stuff besides. At the end of yesterday, before turning off my laptop, I uploaded (I thought) the manuscript to my hardrive so I could back it up at work this morning. This morning, I find that the updated manuscript is not on my hardrive: it only includes what I wrote up to the weekend.
Now, there is a possibility that it simple didn't copy over, and the full manuscript still exists on my laptop at home. Or, the possibility exists that I have done a hugely boneheaded thing, and instead of backing up the newer version onto the external hardrive, I instead replaced the one on my laptop with the older version, thus deleting a chunk of the story.
In theory, I could rewrite. But I powerfully do not want to have to do this. I am terrified that I will have lost all this work, emotional work that I poured myself into. So, I am sitting here at the office, stuck for the next several hours with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, worried that when I get home and check my manuscript, it will be incomplete.
Cross your fingers for me, dear readers.
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