Tuesday 14 February 2017

Dazed and confused

In the last few days of working on the thesis I went looking through my computer for the master copy of Belief so that I could check a timeline issue, and made the unpleasant discovery that the master copy, thanks to a hiccough in my operating system, no longer existed. Since it was the last few days of working on the thesis I screamed for a little bit and went back to working on the thesis, but after the thesis was done I went around to the computer-type people I know to confirm that, yes, the file had been eaten and, while I still had sections of the novel littering my hard drive that could be pulled together to make up what I'd lost, minus a round or two of revision, there was no way of recovering the actual document that had been lost.

Considering this is the fourth time that such a thing has happened with this novel alone it should no longer surprise anyone that I draft on paper. I'm not sure if this happens to be an especially ill-fated novel, or if I'm having worse luck than usual with electronics. Either way, it's not as much of a total disaster as it could be. Depending on the time of day it's slightly less annoying than the fact that, since moving, I can find none of my socks or sweaters. Though that could be due to still being stuck in the brain-fog that seemed to descend the moment I handed in, which has made everything from spelling to tying my shoes pretty well impossible. The one thing that I haven't been too foggy to do is transcribe, so the moment that I could look at the first draft without feeling sick I started transcribing it. And this afternoon I finished it. Maybe tomorrow my head will be clear enough to start putting what I have in order again.