Just deleted chapter.

[Deleted member 113259]

Ever write an entire chapter and then accidentally close the tab right as you're finishing the first draft, deleting all of your progress?

I did. Just now.

 

[ShipTeaser]

Ouch. Never list a whole chapter that way, but have certainly lost chunks to laptop randomly shutting down and other random crap.

On the bright side, your replacement will probably be better, I tend to find

 

[Sola-sama]

Use gdocs bro

 

[LowinKeshin]

Twice. I did it twice before. But somehow, I find it better than the original... maybe I should delete all my finished drafts.

 

[APieceOfRock]

The Google Docs in my pocket:

 

[Deleted member 54065]

Ever write an entire chapter and then accidentally close the tab right as you're finishing the first draft, deleting all of your progress?

I did. Just now.

Ever wrote 12 60k word manuscripts, two volumes for other stories, draw and colored hundreds of full color illustrations for two years, and then accidentally delete all of those without hope for backup because you formatted an entire backup disk?

I did. Last July 2022. ??

Up till now, I haven't done all of the illustrations I lost...though I only have a few backlogs left.

 

[LilRora]

I said it once, I think to Agentt, and I'll say it again.

An author becomes an experienced author when they accidentally delete their progress and don't give up writing.

Welcome, fellow experienced author.

 

[OwlrageousJones]

I lost half a Ren'Py visual novel I was working on. I still don't know how.

I went to revisit it, and couldn't find the files anymore. All that writing gone... but I'll get back to it one day.

 

[Syringe]

This is a good ad for Microsoft 365. Their cloud storage, autosave and history recovery/list feature is insane.

 

[Rhaps]

This is a good ad for Microsoft 365. Their cloud storage, autosave and history recovery/list feature is insane.

Don't need it if I hard wired myself to save every 3 paragraph. I do everything I can to not spend money

 

[APieceOfRock]

Don't need it if I hard wired myself to save every 3 paragraph. I do everything I can to not spend money

Google Docs is free though. Granted it has like a 50GB(?) limit but if you're purely using it for txt files then it'll literally never run out.

 

[TASTYLEADPAINT]

Use word. It links to one drive and automatically uploads every 10 words or so

 

[TheEldritchGod]

I do everything in text edit, then switch to Word, then upload it to this site, so there are three separate formats and copies of each chapter.

 

[Syringe]

Don't need it if I hard wired myself to save every 3 paragraph. I do everything I can to not spend money

That's a really good approach too. I wish I was more disciplined like that.

But if there's one thing I really like about MS 365, it's the ability to directly edit my documents on my phone and virtually everywhere. Even other documents, images, folders, etc. I think that convenience alone makes it worth it for me, but there's totally ways you can do this without paying.

 

[OwlrageousJones]

That's a really good approach too. I wish I was more disciplined like that.

But if there's one thing I really like about MS 365, it's the ability to directly edit my documents on my phone and virtually everywhere. Even other documents, images, folders, etc. I think that convenience alone makes it worth it for me, but there's totally ways you can do this without paying.

I use gdocs for that same reason.

I get a surprising amount of writing done on my phone when I'm just waiting for things.

 

[Paul__Michaels]

Well, at least you know what's in the chapter. You just get to make it better the second time through.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Ever write an entire chapter and then accidentally close the tab right as you're finishing the first draft, deleting all of your progress?

I did. Just now.

Write offline, then copy it to the window. Not only will it prevent such things from happening (any reasonable text editor will prompt you to save after each edit), it will also let you write when you cannot connect to the Internet and will improve your workflow if you take time to actually customise your text editor to your needs.

Do not use word or google docs or other garbage like that though (although I hesitate to call libreoffice garbage but for this purpose it is, too, not recommended). You are just writing text, there is no need to get any of the fancy capabilities they offer. And they load forever and have an ugly interfaces. A good old .TXT file will do just fine.

Having nifty shortcuts to actually edit text will be good though.

Also I've heard that it's easier to see typos when you have a mono font on.

Like this
I guess

Where each letter is equally wide

Not like
This

So find a text editor that supports such a font (any one for programming or terminal-based are such by default usually)

Save in in several places: a usb, your pc hd, a backup hd, a cloud - though it is something you should do with everything on your pc because when it gets lost some way is not a question of if but when.

Based on that, choose your text editor.

 

[DarkeReises]

I lost half a Ren'Py visual novel I was working on. I still don't know how.

I went to revisit it, and couldn't find the files anymore. All that writing gone... but I'll get back to it one day.

I hope it was at least a porn one, so I'll have something to look forward to when you eventually get back to it and it finds its way into my eyes. If not, tough luck.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

Never happened to me because autosave is the best.

 

[RainingSky]

Ever write an entire chapter and then accidentally close the tab right as you're finishing the first draft, deleting all of your progress?

I did. Just now.

Autosafe ... Autosafe your best Friend....

Ever wrote 12 60k word manuscripts, two volumes for other stories, draw and colored hundreds of full color illustrations for two years, and then accidentally delete all of those without hope for backup because you formatted an entire backup disk?

I did. Last July 2022. ??

Up till now, I haven't done all of the illustrations I lost...though I only have a few backlogs left.

.........I feel you ... best of luck .....