Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Take Two

Yesterday I sat down and discovered 1) a set of revisions that I thought had been saved last week hadn't been saved at all, and 2) moving from a thumb drive to one of my home computers I had copied an unrevised section back over a revised section, so that was gone as well. Neither section was very long, and I could remember some of the changes I had made, but I had done those revisions in a sort of concentrated fury which I knew I couldn't recapture.

So I didn't get much done yesterday. Mostly I just berated myself. I've never lost anything I've written before. I now feel completely disconnected from the manuscript.

I couldn't even enjoy the ice dancing last night. (Though after the Russian "Aborigines" the night before I think I need to question my interest in this so-called sport.)

Well, life marches on. And I've just remembered an incident from a bio of Peggy Lee I read recently. When they were recording "Is That All There Is?' she went through something like 30 takes, trying to get it right. And on the very last take, when she finally nailed it, it turned out the sound engineer hadn't been recording. So they had to do it one more time. And that was the take that got released.

3 comments:

Roxy said...

Oh, ouch, Laura. I've had that happen to me before. I am paranoid about it happening again. Don't berate yourself. It happens to us all. On the bright side, at least it wasn't a huge chunk of the story.:)

Mary Aalgaard said...

That's frustrating. Here's hoping the recreation is brilliant and SAVED!

Laurel Garver said...

Sometimes technology is NOT our friend. Sorry about your lost revisions.

When you get a moment, could you pop by my blog and let me know where you heard about the Whoops! Blogfest? I'd promised a prize to my best shout-out helper, but I can't figure out who to thank. Gracias!