High Drama at the Office

I may have learned an important lesson this week--one I should have learned long ago. One that several others in the past have attempted to teach me.

It all started yesterday afternoon around 4:30 when the power at our office suddenly went out. I had been working on THE BOOK most of the day. When my computer and the lights all flickered and then went off, my first thought was frustration that I wasn't going to be able to keep on working (the deadline looms ever nearer). The next thought that I had actually took an interrogative form: Did I just lose everything I've been writing today?

Quickly I reassured myself. Remember the last time you nearly lost a manuscript?After the nice help desk person retrieved it all from the server, he made sure that auto save was turned on. I may have lost a little, but I didn't lose much.

Still, the question continued to haunt me the rest of the evening. I turned to H. for reassurance. He knows much about computers. He did reassure me that if I did, in fact, have the auto save setting on, that I would be able to get most of the document back. When I got to work and turned on my computer, there would be some sort of "revert" option that would allow me to get everything back that had been there. (He followed this with a gentle reminder--he is not the first, I'm afraid--about the importance of saving documents frequently throughout the day.)

So it was with just a little trepidation that I faced my monitor this morning. I turned the computer on, caught my breath, pulled up the document--and nearly screamed in anguish when the manuscript came up looking exactly as it did the morning before--before I had worked on it and added to it for an entire day. And there was absolutely nothing there about reverting to anything.

In desperation I headed over to my only hope--the help desk people. These must be at once the most beloved and most despised people in our office. I must confess that I experienced both emotions within a brief time. I approached their area and explained my dilemma, knowing that as soon as I left there would be comments about my blondeness, about people who are technologically impaired. (It's okay-they probably don't know what a gerund is or even how to form a plural possessive correctly.) I ended my explanation with a pitiful appeal: "I'm sure I have auto save turned on. It has to be there somewhere, doesn't it?" I even explained the part that this was a manuscript that I was writing and compiling . . . it had all come from my head . . . there was no place to go to get it back . . . .

The female help desk person looked sympathetically at me as she shook her head and told me that all was lost. The male help desk person gave an utterly unsympathetic response: "The muse struck once; it will strike again." I asked him to reserve those types of comments for after I had an actual published book in my hand. Perhaps then it might be (but probably wouldn't be) funny; I was not in the mood for humor today.

To humor me, female help desk person walked with me back to my desk. I knew that she thought it was an exercise in futility, but it was the only way to get me off her back. To make a long story short, after about five minutes--she found the files! She got everything back except one paragraph. And I was one happy editor.

So yes, I found myself frequently hitting the save command throughout the day. And at the end of the day, I printed off a hard copy of the whole thing and carried it home with me. I intend to print off every page that I write at the end of the day until the whole thing is done. And to all of you out there who have tried to teach me through the years the importance of saving--even Jon--the lesson might just have sunk in this time--maybe.