What would you do if your Most Precious Manuscript vanished

Rewrite. I know this one because it happened to me a long time ago when I wrote my first novel. My computer completely gave up on me and although a computer guy we knew was able to salvage about fifty pages from the hard drive (not sure how), the rest of the manuscript was gone so I had to start over. I've also had this happen to chapters and a few short stories over the years. Anything I really cared about was rewritten, and yes sometimes I do think it was better. Was it exactly the same? No. But it still held the same spirit and that was what was important. Of course now I backup everything religiously to the harddrive, my Dana, on hardcopy, and on disc. Rewriting isn't the worst thing in the world, though, and so I'd do it again if I had to, be it five pages or five hundred if the story was really important to me.

I'd lose it, seriously.

But hey, thanks for reminding me to make a back-up.

I have unlosable backups.

Backups must be in a different place, either electronically or physically. Mine is saved to 2 DVDs, one lives in the car and the other in the house so if either goes up in flames, I have the other.

The version of MF that I uploaded is about the 15th version of the story, the rewrite I'm doing for print is the 16th.

Between the 14th and 15th, I changed from cyberpunk to urban fantasy, added several characters, removed a major one, changed the nature of several relationships, and how the MC gets involved.

It wouldn't phase me.

But, considering that it would take...my webserver imploding, my two computers dying, my flatemate computer's dying and possibly several CDs...I think I'm safe.

If I lost all 3 backups of it, I'd assume God was trying to tell me something.

Another Spinach fan...just words folks.

ETA: My reasoning? If it was so damn good, it would be published - hence no problem retrieving a copy.

I actually did this once. I hadn't slept properly and came up with a brilliant idea for short story/flash fiction and when I'd finished it, I pressed closed and the standard little message came up saying; would you like to save changes to untitled document?

I, in my weary state, pressed no.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I really did like that story but I've never been able to write it again. With any other story though, I whine for a little while then dive back into it. Just that one story will always haunt me.

After being released from Bedlam, dealing with my chocolate addiction, (like now) and learning to type with stubs from chewing my fingernails to the elbows, I'd try to do it again.

I have all of my manuscripts saved on a flash drive which I have had surgically implanted into my left ventricle. If I lose that, I'll be dead anyway.

Okay, that was a lie. In reality, I don't even have a finished manuscript to lose.
Just recently, I had a laptop stolen. I was already very close to hunting the perpetrator to the ends of the earth; if it had had the only copy of a finished novel on it, their head would be atop a pole somewhere by now.

KTC said:

Start over. Who cares. It's only words. We're gonna die, people. Who cares? My most precious possession is life...the rest is insignificant. I enjoy writing...I'm mad about it. I have many completed manuscripts and I have lost or thrown away many completed manuscripts. They are just words...dust in the wind.

I picked spinach because it is just as irrelevant as anything else...

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Only words? Blasphemer!

Jesus, who let this joker in here?

It's everybody else's fault, really. They didn't remind you to make a back-up copy.

I did in fact have this problem. My PC is set up to save to the server whenever I turn it off. When I fried my hard drive it transpired taht actually, it hadn't been backing up. For six months. I had a three step plan to get me through it

1 - panic, scream, get drunk
2 - e-mail one of betas and ask if she still has the original copy, pretty please, maybe still lurking in her inbox?
3 - moan at the old man until he agrees to spend an entire day retrieving data from the hard drive. Considering you could actually smell where it had burnt this seemed unlikely.

1 made me feel better briefly. 2 and 3 worked.

I now have a flash drive.

Matera the Mad said:

-- I mean totally, without a trace, no backups, not even a scribbled note, not even your MC's name scrawled in a public toilet, a complete and utter goneness, NOTHING!

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Oh my God! I don't even want to think about it!!

Seriously. I think I'd rather just be dead. For me it's not just a story, it's...I don't know. Something I created, brought to life, a living thing that changed me. One of the very few reasons I have to exist. I throw fits when I lose a half hour's worth of work...I can't even imagine what I'd do in this case. Not even as a hypothetical.

Considering how many back-ups and web-cached copies I make, it would be a world-class catastrophe that destroyed all of them, and I guess a world-class catastrophe would take out the publishers, too.

Oh well.

I'd have to start writing on birch bark or the walls of the few deep tunnels that had survived.

I would have to be bribed out of a darkened room listening to 'woe is me music' with alot of alcohol if this happened to me...

Seriously though, leave it a while and if the idea is still with you re-write it. Think of it as editing from scratch!

Only baby spinach!

That happened to me once. After I was done being sick over it, I started over.

I'd probably cry first. I did cry when I thought I'd lost my first complete MS ever. Thankfully, hubby recovered it.

But yeah, I'd cry first. Probably pause and not write or do anything for a few days. Then dive back in and pray it turned out better the second time!