(no subject)

[johnpalmer]

There are new updates at For The Dream and LongHairedWeirdo.

I'm upset today, because, due to a stupid mixup on my text editor, I lost my second essay on "what is rape?" and now I'll have to type it over again. The text editor was, for some stupid reason, saving things with a .dat extension. Well, it also makes backups, with a .bak extension. Neither extension will bring up a special icon in explorer for me, so when I see a bunch of .bak extensions for things that I've already finished, I just select and delete.

I'm sure you can all guess what happened, right? .dat and .bak just aren't dissimilar enough at icon size for me to realize what I'm doing. (And why would I save a .dat file anyway?)

The pain about this is, sure, I can reconstruct what I said, close enough, but this time, it's work, whereas last time it was creation, you know? Plus, I'm sure I hit one brilliant turn of phrase or another during the first writeup that I'll lose during the second.

Comments

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Probably a stupid question, because I know you know to look there, but if you're using Windows, did you check in the trash? Alternatively, could you use a third-party program like Norton Utilities to undelete the file?

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Argh. Oh, brother, do I know the feeling. I remember newsrooms in the days when we wrote on terminals that stored everything to a central drive. Some of the terminals were finicky enough that if someone nudged them while walking past, the static electricity would wipe the screen. If you hadn't saved yet ... well, let's just say that I always imagined that hell would dying and going to the Place Where The Dead Stories Went.

If it's any consolation, I usually find that - as much of a pain in the ass as it is - writing it over results in better prose, even if it means losing some brilliant turns of phrase.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did check the recycle bin, but it had been emptied. I don't own Norton or any such thing (I haven't even seen Norton in a while... but maybe that's because I haven't been looking), and really, the trial of finding a shareware/freeware utility and then installing and using it makes me figure it'd be easier to just re-type the thing.

Plus, in line with what kightp says, oftentimes what I think was golden really wasn't all that golden. I'm finding that more and more I'm going to have to be satisfied with moderate quality, slightly tarnished brass.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Possibly true... rewriting at least avoids the inherent laziness of not re-doing paragraph 4 because it kinda-sorta fits, and you only discover, looking back a year later, that paragraph 4 was a big, glaring, awful digression that couldn't help but confuse the reader.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

My first newspaper editor, the late E. J. "Shine" Sundstrom, used to advise rookies: "Whenever you write a phrase you fall in love with, that's the first thing you should cut."

The SOB was right.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I am so sympathetic!

Drat! I have had this happen. That awful--blank moment when you realize:

Huh? GONE?