Horror tales for writers

This is a story that will make many other authors shake in fear, although it might leave many other baffled. 

Losing half of the content of the latest novel.

This happened to me two days ago, and I wanted to show this to everybody because I know it's not a question of being careless or distracted; it's something that can happen regardless.

I recently finished one novel that should be published next year, and I thought I could go through the pre-edits for another story to be published before, perhaps already this year.

My style is writing a book and as soon as it's finished, start another one letting the previous one in the backburner for about one month before starting to edit it.

In the present case, I let it be for about three months, and I was ready to read it through with clean eyes.

I generally have several backups for the same novel, one on my computer, one on the external memory, and another on the cloud storage. In theory, they should be synced together, and, in the end, there should be at least one viable updated copy among these all.

What happened shocked me completely. In the latest draft saved, the one that should have been ready for editing 11 chapters were missing, for a total of 45000 words. 

My husband isn't a writer and has no idea about the meaning and consequences of such a catastrophe. He just said, "It's not the end of the world, you can write them again."

WHAT???

I mean one chapter, yes, I could have written it once again, no problem, but eleven, after a break of three months, when I hardly remembered what I have written there? Impossible!

At midnight, knowing that the day after I needed to go to work, I had to give up, and with tears in my eyes, I went to bed, hoping I could at least find some sleep.

Enough to say that I couldn't, and the morning after, in my office, I was already thinking about how in the world I could have rewritten the half story.

Then, just because I need to check everything, I went once again to my cloud storage and searched every single file and folder to make sure that I've searched every place.

The last place I expected to find the full draft was the trash bin of the cloud storage. Now, I wish to understand how in this human world, it could end up there, because for sure, I would have never thrown away a full-length novel, not at least without having it published or at least stored somewhere else too.

Despite my amazement, I saved the copy in the other five locations, because at this point, I really don't trust anything anymore, not even myself.

On a very positive note, everything ended well, and I don't have to rewrite half of the novel unless, when I start to read it through, I will find something to be changed.

I hope you will never find yourself in the same situation, and please, save, save, save at least one thousand copies of the final draft.

With a lighter heart, I wish you a great weekend!