Would you like some cheese with that whine?

I've been really struggling with my writing the past month or so. It's not that I don't have ideas floating around in my head.

My problem is purely technical.

In early May, my hard drive crashed. I lost everything. Yes, everything.

I lost family photos. I lost passwords. I lost work files; I'm a web designer, so that goes hand-in-hand with the passwords. I had to re-install software. It was not a pretty sight.

I managed to recover most of my WIP*, thanks to my critique groups and some friends who I'd sent various parts for their input. All but one chapter, that is. The second to last chapter I'd written before losing everything.

You would think that losing a "middle chapter" wouldn't be so bad. And I'm more grateful then anyone will ever know to have only lost one chapter, believe me. And I know where I want the chapter to end up, I know what clues must be woven into the fabric of the story. I just can't remember exactly how I got there.

For everyone who is nodding sagely, thinking "run an anti-virus" or "make sure you back up," I have another confession. It was my Mac that bit the dust. It had nothing to do with spyware or malware or viruses. A section of the hard drive lost it's magnetism. (Or some such thing...the computer guy tried to explain it to me, but I was still devastated at the time.) And I own an external hard drive. It's even connected to the computer in question.

But external hard drives are only useful if you actually put stuff on them.

Learn from my misfortune. Back up your important files. Heck, back up the things you don't think are that important. Then you won't be missing a section in the middle.

Blessings!

Nichole

*That would be Work In Progress. Or the novel I'm currently working on.