As I preach about things like Dropbox and google drives, many of you have heard my story about how I lost more than half of my novel “Duty, Honor, Love” (coming soon! Keep an eye out for the cover release!) and a little luck, some illegal software and lots of prayers got me back less than 1000 words away from where I was.

So I preach all of the time BACK YOUR NOVEL UP.

Guess what I didn’t do last night?!

SAVE MY WORK!

This morning my SO turned my laptop on and boom, my Hard Drive was missing, BIOS couldn’t read it massive error. *headdesk* *repeatedly*

Now it’s not the end of the world (Or so I keep telling myself) I wrote 1538 words last night (not bad for a migraine of epic proportions) but I didn’t save it!!

It is very much one of these shoot me now moments. I thankfully have a copy from the day before on my dropbox and I think I can maybe pull up my autosave file, but it’s so frustrating.

If you are reading this post stop everything you’re doing! SAVE AND BACK UP YOUR NOVEL! If you’re using a USB remember to save to your hard drive and to the USB and eject it. Upload a different copy with today’s date to Google drive and to dropbox in a different file/folder that you usually use. Email yourself a copy. If you’re writing by hand, scan it or photocopy it and stick it in a fire safe box!

There is nothing more frustrating in the world than loosing part of your novel, even if it was only 1500 odd words!