Today has been a very productive day for me writing wise, it’s just 3:00 p.m London time and already I have one complete chapter done! But let me tell you, it did not start out like this. First, last night I left off writing thinking okay tomorrow, I’ll come back and w,x ,y,z is  the focus. Previously, I had wrote  about four chapters  of my current thriller, then I ripped it to shreds (a year later late 2016).  But I kept my vision and story line,  I was not a fan of how I wrote “the vision.” So anyway, I started out again. Last night I was  so so so sure I kept the old version … somewhere, I just had to have it, right? Of course somewhere.

Today I thought I’d  go back to it, as I’m  writing a scene that now fits with what I wrote before  a lot better. I went back to my external hard drive the most logical place to look- it wasn’t there, I searched my whole lap top- it wasn’t there. I started to panic, no panic is not the word I started to curse loudly, in a very un lady like way LOL (thank God my son’s at nursery he’s now at the tender age of three, and he repeats EVERYTHING he hears this is how he picks up his vocabulary).

For about five mins, I just sat behind the lap top staring out the window at the rain, then back at my lap top, then at the hard drive in a foul mood. I wanted to pick everything up off the table and chuck it out the window onto the main road and curse  and let a car run over everything! But that would not have helped… so I didn’t  🙂 I  questioned myself, where did I save my old work? Did I really delete it off my external hard drive, once I rewrote the story ? What  have I done with it, I’ve lost at least four  fucking chapters!!  Was all that went through my head.

Then I turned the house upside down, looking for my old USBs  from a few years ago, hoping to God I found them. There it was … all 20,000 words of my old manuscript ahhh sighs of relief, break out the violins please.  I swear I could literally feel the happy hormones taking over my body again 🙂 all I had to do now was hope to God, what I was looking for was  saved on this particular USB I found.

THANK THE HEAVENS! There it was, OMG one chapter down, go Kim *high five.* *Shake it around the living room like Beyonce would* I got my happy dance on y’all 🙂

What I learned today, is NEVER ever move your work (no matter how old) from the main place you save it to another, never ever delete anything as you never know you may want to go back to it, as I did today, rewrite it, change it, add it to another story whatever. The point is save,save,save no matter how rubbish you think it is. Which is how I felt when I started to rewrite the chapters and clearly moved it off my external hard drive. I thought it was a pile of shit to be honest what I had wrote. But obviously not crap enough to delete completely, just crap enough to move from my current work and published work. Why the hell I did it, I honestly don’t know.

Writers has this ever happened to you? Have you ever lost work? Or re found it and got your happy dance on?  Have you deleted something and then tried your hardest to recover it? Tell me your story! Drop me a comment.