Generally speaking I find gmail a really good email service. It’s fast, free, easy to access and very reliable. Except that yesterday it really, really screwed me. Hard.
For the last week I’ve been working on a section of my second novel, [i]Crossline[/i], making tweaks and flushing it out. It’s not a major scene, but it has some nuance I wanted in there, and it’s been fun to write. The way I normally write is to just sit at my desk–like I am now–and plug away in Microsoft word. I save thGenerally speaking I find gmail a really good email service. It’s fast, free, easy to access and very reliable. Except that yesterday it really, really screwed me. Hard.
For the last week I’ve been working on a section of my second novel, [i]Crossline[/i], making tweaks and flushing it out. It’s not a major scene, but it has some nuance I wanted in there, and it’s been fun to write. The way I normally write is to just sit at my desk–like I am now–and plug away in Microsoft word. I save the file throughout the writing process, so I’m never worried that I’ll lose it. Still, I back up my files regularly.
But what I also do is work on sections of my book in gmail, and save it as a draft. This is useful if I’m going to be on the road, at a friend’s house, with family, on a business trip, and I want to keep work on the same file without having to transport it via a flash drive. I’ll work on the file in gmail, save the draft, and never fill in the email send destination, so even if I accidentally hit send, it won’t go anywhere. But after a while, even if I’m not finished with whatever I’m working on, I’ll email it to myself so I have it permanently in my inbox, and then cut and paste it into a new email, call it version 2, and save it as a new draft.
Works really well.
Until …
So I’m plugging away yesterday after about a week’s worth of work, and I’ve got the scene very close to being finished. I was really happy with it. And then … poof. Now, maybe I hit some crazy key strokes that signalled the discard option, but I don’t think so, but all of sudden my screen had a spaz attack of some sort–[i]blllll-bzzzt[/i]–and my draft was gone.
Gone.
Not in the sent folder. Not in my inbox. Wasn’t in the drafts folder and it wasn’t in the trash. It was gone. Just flat out gone.
#$@!!!!!!
I searched around in the help section, but no luck. A week’s worth of work down the drain. Luckily, I was able to recreate about 70 percent of what I lost, but second versions are never the same.
If you’ve got any theories as to what happened, I’d love to hear them, but otherwise this is one case where gmail–good, ole reliable gmail–just stuck it to me.
