That sound you hear? Those are my screams.
I’d started a short story last week. It wasn’t much, I wrote two pages in the heat of the idea, and I wasn’t sure if I’d get back to it. If I’d want to get back to it. It was, suffice to say, a little strange, and not really sellable. At least, I can’t think of a market where this story would have worked. Anyway, I’m getting off message.
This morning, I fixed a pot of coffee, and as Baltimore has become as rainy as Seattle this past week, I sat down and wrote eight more pages by lunch. The story now stood at ten pages, and I felt good about it.
Then, after lunch and a trip to the post office and grocery store, and I worked on a story a friend of me asked to look over for him.
This evening, after a little LEGO Star Wars II, I sat down at the computer, opened up the story I’d worked on this morning, and discovered…
Somehow. I. Didn’t. Save. It.
No, I said to self. This can’t be. It must be somewhere else on the hard drive. It must, it must! Thirty minutes fruitless searches later, no, it’s not there. I didn’t save the stupid story! How did this happen? Was it the little paper clip guy, trying to sabotage my day?
Fuck.
I have the two pages I wrote last week. I can reconstruct the eight pages I wrote this morning. It won’t be the same, but at least I remember where I went this morning with the story.
Fuck.