Help!!☻I'm on the verge of hysteria here!
Flist. Flist. I really need your help right now. Seriously, you have to help me here - I'm very upset right now. I've never been very materialistic, but I don't think I've ever been so upset over over losing anything as much as I was about losing my fanfiction file. I always see authors claim that they've lost all their files and therefore, won't be able to continue a fic anymore, but I never thought it'd happen to me. Here's the story:
A week or so back, I read this SasuNaru fanfiction called The Bends by lifeasacloud recced to me by senior-witch and it sort of inspired my to start writing a short one of my own. I toyed with the idea of writing a SasuNaru for a while, but unexpectedly, characters like Itachi and Kisame ended up dominating a huge portion of the spotlight as well. What surprised me most was that I enjoyed writing them both so much. Even more, I enjoyed writing the interactions between Sasuke and Kisame. that was my favourite part of the fic - and as you guys know already, I'm hardly ever satisfied with anything I write. But this was an exception - even though I was not pleased with the Itachi-Sasuke interaction, I was quite pleased with the Sasuke-Kisame interaction.
Six days ago, I saved what I had written upto then to fanfiction.net's server and yesterday night, I resumed writing. I wrote two pivotal scenes that featured Kisame and Sasuke and I don't think I've quite liked any of my work as much as I liked those two scenes. I typed yesterday night to the early hours of the morning. For four hours straight. And then suddenly, my computer just went and froze on me. Just froze. I tried doing everything I could - moving the mouse, pressing the CtrlAltDlt keys - to get it to work. Problem was, it didn't work. And so I had to resort to restarting the damn thing. When the desktop screen appeared, I eagerly went to my fanfic folder and clicked on the file labelled 'Midnight - SasuNaru', anxious to get back to typing.
When the window appeared, I expected to see all the paragraphs I had typed up. Instead, I saw a bunch of square boxes lined together in a longsingular row. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, and so I panicked. To the point I started to feel like screaming. Normally, I'm very adept at controlling my emotions since not much offends me - and I'm mostly neutral - but I can't believe - and this is going to be very embarrassing to admit - I started shedding tears. Over a fanfiction file of all things. Last time I cried, it was over two years back. And I tried to tell myself that fuck no, it wasn't the end of the world but I just couldn't stop feeling so damn helpless.
At this point, I should tell you that I don't have a MS Word and I've been using Notepad for a year now. My computer is ancient. Ancient, I tell you and whenever I try using MS Word, it just keeps freezing at odd intervals. Last year, after having to reboot my computer because of a drive glitch, MS. Word and all other MS Office programs on my C drive were deleted. I can't say I regret it. Notepad was easy to type in, and I've never had much problem with spellings. But seriously, I never thought that Notepad had such ...unreliable back-up facilities. Now I'm wondering taht if I had Microsoft word, could this disaster have been prevented?
I tried uploading my file - it was called Midnight - to Google Docs and guess what? It uploaded just fine. Feeling slight hopeful - and elated - I clicked on the uploaded file. When the page fully loaded, I was expecting to see words. Lots of them. Instead, what I saw was a blank Google Doc wordsheet, with not a single word on it. Not even the much-hated squares.
Next, I tried to upload it onto fanfiction.net's server, where I was in for a pleasant surprise. I had almost forgotten that I had saved Midnight there six days ago. Granted, it was only half of what I'd written, but I still managed to salvage something... Anyway, when I tried to upload it, it didn't work. It said, and I directly quote:
'The file upload process has failed. Please try again. If the error repeats, please email the file in question to site support.
Error Message: You have uploaded a file ending in .rtf but this file does not appears to be in the correct format: octet-stream. Please make sure you have the correct file extension for the file.'
I checked the extension - since I had saved it in Notepad as a Rich Text Document, the extension was undoubtedly .rtf. I don't know what's wrong and I have no idea what 'octet-stream' means.
Normally, I wouldn't have bothered posting, but I actually liked the Kisame-Sasuke interaction and it was the Kisame-Sasuke interaction that I had no back-up for. It's all just a bunch of squares now and I don't know why. Is it because I restarted the computer when it froze on me while typing? What else was I supposed to do? Nothing I tried was working so restarting was the only option.
Do you guys have any idea what's wrong? Anyway, I'm practically begging you guys: Please, send me your e-mail so that I can send the the .rtf Midnight file to you as an attachment. I know most of you have Microsoft word, and I'm hoping that maybe, Word - or any other program at your disposal may be able to read Midnight as words instead of just binary squares. If you're concerned about your privacy being compromised, then you needn't worry: I've screened all the comments on this journal, so that no one but me will be able to see your e-mail address. Please guys, help. It's silly of me, I realize, to get so worked up over a fanfiction file of all things, but just imagine how you'd feel if you lost a story you've spent hours and hours typing. I out a lot of effort into Midnight, and it can't just disappear like that! I'm not joking about this.
If you don't believe me, then here's a sneak peak of the part of Midnight that I still have:
'Parallel, equal and opposite, couples...' Sasuke dimly recalled the words his physics teacher had preached yesterday - they had been covering momentum. The fan rotated round and round like a merry-go round. Only, it wasn't merry. It seemed weary of its monotonous existence, as if time was an invisible force slowing it down each moment. Suddenly, Sasuke felt weary too. His mind drifted on hapless waters to thoughts he normally wouldn't entertain, and flew off tangents like a muted ping pong ball.
What if... what if he hadn't existed? He wondered that sometimes, but the thought was never as imbued with clarity as it was now. Would Itachi have accepted all those scholarships he had been generously offered, if that was the case? Maybe he would have been happier, gotten a normal girlfriend... or psychotic boyfriend, his mind tagged, momentarily drifting to Deidara. And then screeching to a halt. It occurred to him suddenly that his brother had probably had sex in the sheets he was lying in. The images from four years ago flashed through his mind, like a faulty movie reel, showing flickering, tantalizing footage of black hair, parted mouths and bare chests in slow motion. Itachi-- Itachi had looked like he was in pain too but his expression... to have his usually stoic brother look so wanton and human and--
Midnight was very different from anything I had ever written before and maybe that and the fact that I actually liked the Kisame-Sasuke interaction - which I lost - is maybe why I'm so attched to this. So guys, please leave me your e-mail address so I can send the file to you. See if your word-viewing programs can read my file. And if by a stroke of luck, it can, then please copy-paste and send it to me in a reply e-mail. I don't know what else to do - and rewriting a scene never works, in my experience.So please, help! Remember, the comments are screened, so you don't have to worry about your privacy. I'll be eternally grateful if you can help.
Expecting help,
a despearate indira14.
A week or so back, I read this SasuNaru fanfiction called The Bends by lifeasacloud recced to me by senior-witch and it sort of inspired my to start writing a short one of my own. I toyed with the idea of writing a SasuNaru for a while, but unexpectedly, characters like Itachi and Kisame ended up dominating a huge portion of the spotlight as well. What surprised me most was that I enjoyed writing them both so much. Even more, I enjoyed writing the interactions between Sasuke and Kisame. that was my favourite part of the fic - and as you guys know already, I'm hardly ever satisfied with anything I write. But this was an exception - even though I was not pleased with the Itachi-Sasuke interaction, I was quite pleased with the Sasuke-Kisame interaction.
Six days ago, I saved what I had written upto then to fanfiction.net's server and yesterday night, I resumed writing. I wrote two pivotal scenes that featured Kisame and Sasuke and I don't think I've quite liked any of my work as much as I liked those two scenes. I typed yesterday night to the early hours of the morning. For four hours straight. And then suddenly, my computer just went and froze on me. Just froze. I tried doing everything I could - moving the mouse, pressing the CtrlAltDlt keys - to get it to work. Problem was, it didn't work. And so I had to resort to restarting the damn thing. When the desktop screen appeared, I eagerly went to my fanfic folder and clicked on the file labelled 'Midnight - SasuNaru', anxious to get back to typing.
When the window appeared, I expected to see all the paragraphs I had typed up. Instead, I saw a bunch of square boxes lined together in a longsingular row. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, and so I panicked. To the point I started to feel like screaming. Normally, I'm very adept at controlling my emotions since not much offends me - and I'm mostly neutral - but I can't believe - and this is going to be very embarrassing to admit - I started shedding tears. Over a fanfiction file of all things. Last time I cried, it was over two years back. And I tried to tell myself that fuck no, it wasn't the end of the world but I just couldn't stop feeling so damn helpless.
At this point, I should tell you that I don't have a MS Word and I've been using Notepad for a year now. My computer is ancient. Ancient, I tell you and whenever I try using MS Word, it just keeps freezing at odd intervals. Last year, after having to reboot my computer because of a drive glitch, MS. Word and all other MS Office programs on my C drive were deleted. I can't say I regret it. Notepad was easy to type in, and I've never had much problem with spellings. But seriously, I never thought that Notepad had such ...unreliable back-up facilities. Now I'm wondering taht if I had Microsoft word, could this disaster have been prevented?
I tried uploading my file - it was called Midnight - to Google Docs and guess what? It uploaded just fine. Feeling slight hopeful - and elated - I clicked on the uploaded file. When the page fully loaded, I was expecting to see words. Lots of them. Instead, what I saw was a blank Google Doc wordsheet, with not a single word on it. Not even the much-hated squares.
Next, I tried to upload it onto fanfiction.net's server, where I was in for a pleasant surprise. I had almost forgotten that I had saved Midnight there six days ago. Granted, it was only half of what I'd written, but I still managed to salvage something... Anyway, when I tried to upload it, it didn't work. It said, and I directly quote:
'The file upload process has failed. Please try again. If the error repeats, please email the file in question to site support.
Error Message: You have uploaded a file ending in .rtf but this file does not appears to be in the correct format: octet-stream. Please make sure you have the correct file extension for the file.'
I checked the extension - since I had saved it in Notepad as a Rich Text Document, the extension was undoubtedly .rtf. I don't know what's wrong and I have no idea what 'octet-stream' means.
Normally, I wouldn't have bothered posting, but I actually liked the Kisame-Sasuke interaction and it was the Kisame-Sasuke interaction that I had no back-up for. It's all just a bunch of squares now and I don't know why. Is it because I restarted the computer when it froze on me while typing? What else was I supposed to do? Nothing I tried was working so restarting was the only option.
Do you guys have any idea what's wrong? Anyway, I'm practically begging you guys: Please, send me your e-mail so that I can send the the .rtf Midnight file to you as an attachment. I know most of you have Microsoft word, and I'm hoping that maybe, Word - or any other program at your disposal may be able to read Midnight as words instead of just binary squares. If you're concerned about your privacy being compromised, then you needn't worry: I've screened all the comments on this journal, so that no one but me will be able to see your e-mail address. Please guys, help. It's silly of me, I realize, to get so worked up over a fanfiction file of all things, but just imagine how you'd feel if you lost a story you've spent hours and hours typing. I out a lot of effort into Midnight, and it can't just disappear like that! I'm not joking about this.
If you don't believe me, then here's a sneak peak of the part of Midnight that I still have:
'Parallel, equal and opposite, couples...' Sasuke dimly recalled the words his physics teacher had preached yesterday - they had been covering momentum. The fan rotated round and round like a merry-go round. Only, it wasn't merry. It seemed weary of its monotonous existence, as if time was an invisible force slowing it down each moment. Suddenly, Sasuke felt weary too. His mind drifted on hapless waters to thoughts he normally wouldn't entertain, and flew off tangents like a muted ping pong ball.
What if... what if he hadn't existed? He wondered that sometimes, but the thought was never as imbued with clarity as it was now. Would Itachi have accepted all those scholarships he had been generously offered, if that was the case? Maybe he would have been happier, gotten a normal girlfriend... or psychotic boyfriend, his mind tagged, momentarily drifting to Deidara. And then screeching to a halt. It occurred to him suddenly that his brother had probably had sex in the sheets he was lying in. The images from four years ago flashed through his mind, like a faulty movie reel, showing flickering, tantalizing footage of black hair, parted mouths and bare chests in slow motion. Itachi-- Itachi had looked like he was in pain too but his expression... to have his usually stoic brother look so wanton and human and--
Midnight was very different from anything I had ever written before and maybe that and the fact that I actually liked the Kisame-Sasuke interaction - which I lost - is maybe why I'm so attched to this. So guys, please leave me your e-mail address so I can send the file to you. See if your word-viewing programs can read my file. And if by a stroke of luck, it can, then please copy-paste and send it to me in a reply e-mail. I don't know what else to do - and rewriting a scene never works, in my experience.So please, help! Remember, the comments are screened, so you don't have to worry about your privacy. I'll be eternally grateful if you can help.
Expecting help,
a despearate indira14.