lkdfjljf Gwydion, don't DO that to me.
Auuugh. So a little more clear explanation of last ngiht's flailpost:
As of yesterday morning I was 2 days ahead on my novel, so even if I write not one word today I will still be set going into tomorrow. I had last backed up my entire Word file to GoogleDocs on Monday, and had backed up through the first quarter of yesterday into Liquid Story Binder on my flash drive. (This means that the Awful Scene of Heart-Stabbing Awful did not get backed up yet.)
So last night I watched Mike beat Mass Effect (sidenote: HOLY FUCKING SHIT BADASS), and then he brought out some MageKnight figurines and set up the Epic Battle Thing that falls in the middle of Every Light, with some books and TV remotes to provide terrain, and sketched out the battle tactics for me. Because I fail at them, and he does not.
Having been shown how the battle would most likely end up, I booted up Gwydion and popped in my flash drive. I edited in a handful of things about the tactical stuff, since I had just finished the giant battle scene which was festooned with notes like [***TACTICS GO HERE***] as my writing often is when I have to skip stuff, and then skipped to the wretched aftermath and started doing that. I got about 500 words done, saved, updated my spreadsheet, and continued.
I figure I probably churned out 400 words or so fairly quickly, and tried to save. Word said something about the filename not being valid and not being able to access the disk. Cue me in epic panic mode. This had happened once before, the very first night, but I had gotten around it by being able to select-all and copy-paste into a new file.
So I end up with a .tmp file on my flash drive, my actual NaNo file is gone, and Word is refusing to access the .tmp file becuase it claims that it doesn't exist. Windows, meanwhile, insists that the .tmp file is in use.
Mike fussed with it for a while while I had a minor breakdown of the "sitting on the couch and crying" variety, with bonus "flailing at celeloriel." Eventually I suggested that if Windows thought the file was still in use, we could force-shut-down the flash drive and try again. He didn't want to do that because he was afraid he'd lose the temp file completely, but after trying MS's DocRepair program and everything else he could think of, he gave up and tried that.
And then, finally, we were able to reload the .tmp file and I saved a copy to my computer's hard drive.
What I am given to understand happened is that the way files are saved, the computer makes a temporary copy of the old file, deletes old file, adds new data to temporary copy, and then creates new file with same name as old file. Because of the communication lag with flash drives, the problem I had is actually fairly common. (I had never, EVER experienced it before. Augh.) So Mike suggested that I save onto my hard disk, move to my flash drive when I leave that particular computer, and that way I'm always backed up at least a little.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Save your NaNo to your hard drive and copy to your flash disk; also back up your novel daily. Which I had been doing every day but Thursday. Serves me right, I guess.
Net loss: 400 words from yesterday and severe panic attack. Whew.
As of yesterday morning I was 2 days ahead on my novel, so even if I write not one word today I will still be set going into tomorrow. I had last backed up my entire Word file to GoogleDocs on Monday, and had backed up through the first quarter of yesterday into Liquid Story Binder on my flash drive. (This means that the Awful Scene of Heart-Stabbing Awful did not get backed up yet.)
So last night I watched Mike beat Mass Effect (sidenote: HOLY FUCKING SHIT BADASS), and then he brought out some MageKnight figurines and set up the Epic Battle Thing that falls in the middle of Every Light, with some books and TV remotes to provide terrain, and sketched out the battle tactics for me. Because I fail at them, and he does not.
Having been shown how the battle would most likely end up, I booted up Gwydion and popped in my flash drive. I edited in a handful of things about the tactical stuff, since I had just finished the giant battle scene which was festooned with notes like [***TACTICS GO HERE***] as my writing often is when I have to skip stuff, and then skipped to the wretched aftermath and started doing that. I got about 500 words done, saved, updated my spreadsheet, and continued.
I figure I probably churned out 400 words or so fairly quickly, and tried to save. Word said something about the filename not being valid and not being able to access the disk. Cue me in epic panic mode. This had happened once before, the very first night, but I had gotten around it by being able to select-all and copy-paste into a new file.
So I end up with a .tmp file on my flash drive, my actual NaNo file is gone, and Word is refusing to access the .tmp file becuase it claims that it doesn't exist. Windows, meanwhile, insists that the .tmp file is in use.
Mike fussed with it for a while while I had a minor breakdown of the "sitting on the couch and crying" variety, with bonus "flailing at celeloriel." Eventually I suggested that if Windows thought the file was still in use, we could force-shut-down the flash drive and try again. He didn't want to do that because he was afraid he'd lose the temp file completely, but after trying MS's DocRepair program and everything else he could think of, he gave up and tried that.
And then, finally, we were able to reload the .tmp file and I saved a copy to my computer's hard drive.
What I am given to understand happened is that the way files are saved, the computer makes a temporary copy of the old file, deletes old file, adds new data to temporary copy, and then creates new file with same name as old file. Because of the communication lag with flash drives, the problem I had is actually fairly common. (I had never, EVER experienced it before. Augh.) So Mike suggested that I save onto my hard disk, move to my flash drive when I leave that particular computer, and that way I'm always backed up at least a little.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Save your NaNo to your hard drive and copy to your flash disk; also back up your novel daily. Which I had been doing every day but Thursday. Serves me right, I guess.
Net loss: 400 words from yesterday and severe panic attack. Whew.