Monday 17 May 2010

Right, I know what you are going to say. What on earth have you been up to Nicky?

It’s been weeks and weeks since we’ve heard from you. Have you been arrested for indecent pastry consumption? Are you over in Greece rioting for the sheer sake of it? Has the volcanic ash cloud left you stranded in some far flung place where the breakfast buffet makes it impossible to leave the table and do any work?

Well, like all good procrastinators, I have a more probable list of reasons for my slack behaviour (okay, the breakfast buffet would actually be reasonably realistic), but as it turns out, I don’t need them, because the unthinkable has happened.
I have lost a good portion of the manuscript for Marrying Out of Money.

Yes, you heard right. Nicky Schmidt, person with limited attention span for the niceties of office work, has somehow allowed three months’ work to vanish into the ether of evil computing hell.

What? Didn’t I back it up? Yes, of course I did. I am not so donut-stuffed that I forgot to take out my trusty USB and do the right thing. Problem is, I didn’t reckon on both my laptop and USB mounting a challenge against sanity and wiping the file I had stupidly saved as a wps. What’s that? you ask. Who knows? I reply. And why was it a wps file? Again, can’t really say.

Don’t worry, those questions have been asked by the publisher’s IT guys more than once, and you know, I can’t really give a reason that doesn’t result in the techno geeks rolling their eyes in frustration. Silently, I know they think if I spent more time learning about back-ups and less eating pastries we wouldn’t be in this mess, but people, without the pastries, I couldn’t churn out my work. I need sugar to make the magic happen. Well, until about 5 pm, after which time I need sugar and wine.

So, there you have it. The best excuse ever. Shame that it is, in fact, true. So I am off to rewrite numerous chapters of my new book.

And consume about 40,000 calories. Who says comfort eating has no positive effects?
Stay sane until next time, even if I don’t.

X Nicky.

7 comments:

  1. I would suggest signing up for both Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com) and Mozy (http://www.mozy.com) to help protect against this kind of thing in future. In both cases their free service should be more than adequate.

    If you need help setting it all, that can be arranged.

    - Neil.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh no! I can't believe how calm and collected you sound! Do you have any handwritten drafts you can work from at least? So far, I haven't had any computer related mishaps, but once I left a book behind at work and it was stolen! And I had about a pound of papers tucked into the book, receipts and notes and research notes and entire handwritten scenes... How could someone take that? I still wonder what was written on those pages.
    Good luck with the rewrites!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Neil, appreciate the suggestions. Cheers, Nicky.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for your kind words Deniz, and such a shame about your stolen work. I have original drafts and rewrites up to about March. Stupidly I only had two backups in the same format. I will never do that again!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Argh! How come this post isn't littered with swearwords? I would be in a total mess right now. (It has happened to me once, I thought a USB pen would be invincible, sadly it wasn't, so I ended up trying to piece a project back together from various small backups and it took FOREVER.) It happens! I hope it doesn't take you too long to write it up again.

    Why don't you email it to yourself as well? I do this as a triple measure. I know it's on the PC and USB but if the house blows up...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks Elle, I will def be trying to email back to myself from now on - might have to stop being so cheap and upgrade to a faster internet stick - mine goes slower than the M25 on a Friday afternoon. Cheers, Nicky.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I didn't think that saving it in wps would be a big problem. But my computer skills aren't very strong, either. Do you usually save in .doc and .docx? Also, do you now have 2 USBs? Like a small keychain size & then a larger more expensive 500 GB size? It's amazing how much you have to back things up sometimes! Hope you get it all sorted out!

    ReplyDelete

Monday 17 May 2010

Right, I know what you are going to say. What on earth have you been up to Nicky?

It’s been weeks and weeks since we’ve heard from you. Have you been arrested for indecent pastry consumption? Are you over in Greece rioting for the sheer sake of it? Has the volcanic ash cloud left you stranded in some far flung place where the breakfast buffet makes it impossible to leave the table and do any work?

Well, like all good procrastinators, I have a more probable list of reasons for my slack behaviour (okay, the breakfast buffet would actually be reasonably realistic), but as it turns out, I don’t need them, because the unthinkable has happened.
I have lost a good portion of the manuscript for Marrying Out of Money.

Yes, you heard right. Nicky Schmidt, person with limited attention span for the niceties of office work, has somehow allowed three months’ work to vanish into the ether of evil computing hell.

What? Didn’t I back it up? Yes, of course I did. I am not so donut-stuffed that I forgot to take out my trusty USB and do the right thing. Problem is, I didn’t reckon on both my laptop and USB mounting a challenge against sanity and wiping the file I had stupidly saved as a wps. What’s that? you ask. Who knows? I reply. And why was it a wps file? Again, can’t really say.

Don’t worry, those questions have been asked by the publisher’s IT guys more than once, and you know, I can’t really give a reason that doesn’t result in the techno geeks rolling their eyes in frustration. Silently, I know they think if I spent more time learning about back-ups and less eating pastries we wouldn’t be in this mess, but people, without the pastries, I couldn’t churn out my work. I need sugar to make the magic happen. Well, until about 5 pm, after which time I need sugar and wine.

So, there you have it. The best excuse ever. Shame that it is, in fact, true. So I am off to rewrite numerous chapters of my new book.

And consume about 40,000 calories. Who says comfort eating has no positive effects?
Stay sane until next time, even if I don’t.

X Nicky.

7 comments:

  1. I would suggest signing up for both Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com) and Mozy (http://www.mozy.com) to help protect against this kind of thing in future. In both cases their free service should be more than adequate.

    If you need help setting it all, that can be arranged.

    - Neil.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh no! I can't believe how calm and collected you sound! Do you have any handwritten drafts you can work from at least? So far, I haven't had any computer related mishaps, but once I left a book behind at work and it was stolen! And I had about a pound of papers tucked into the book, receipts and notes and research notes and entire handwritten scenes... How could someone take that? I still wonder what was written on those pages.
    Good luck with the rewrites!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Neil, appreciate the suggestions. Cheers, Nicky.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for your kind words Deniz, and such a shame about your stolen work. I have original drafts and rewrites up to about March. Stupidly I only had two backups in the same format. I will never do that again!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Argh! How come this post isn't littered with swearwords? I would be in a total mess right now. (It has happened to me once, I thought a USB pen would be invincible, sadly it wasn't, so I ended up trying to piece a project back together from various small backups and it took FOREVER.) It happens! I hope it doesn't take you too long to write it up again.

    Why don't you email it to yourself as well? I do this as a triple measure. I know it's on the PC and USB but if the house blows up...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks Elle, I will def be trying to email back to myself from now on - might have to stop being so cheap and upgrade to a faster internet stick - mine goes slower than the M25 on a Friday afternoon. Cheers, Nicky.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I didn't think that saving it in wps would be a big problem. But my computer skills aren't very strong, either. Do you usually save in .doc and .docx? Also, do you now have 2 USBs? Like a small keychain size & then a larger more expensive 500 GB size? It's amazing how much you have to back things up sometimes! Hope you get it all sorted out!

    ReplyDelete