How I Lost (and Saved) My Entire First Draft

(A/N: (haha, throwback) Hey guys, it's 2023 Ren. This is a story I initially published in March 2022. In retrospect, I think I really spiralled when things went south, and I could really handle it better in the future. Also, hilariously, but not-so-hilariously, is that.... well, I don't want to spoil it for you. I'll leave the rest of this Author's Note at the end. Enjoy -- and BACK UP YOUR WORK RN!)

Hello and welcome to the Write with Ren blog! I’m so happy you’re here and I hope you can learn something from my experience of losing MY ENTIRE FIRST DRAFT TWO DAYS AFTER NANOWRIMO.

Luckily, my story has a happy ending, but I know so many writers who went through the same and suffered the loss of entire drafts. In this post, I’m going to tell you exactly how I lost my draft (here’s a hint… Pudding), the steps I took to try to save it, what worked, what didn’t, and what I want every single writer to know so they have the best shot at saving their work should their computer ever take a coffee bath.

It all started one cold December morning…

I woke up bright and early, high off the momentum from winning my very first Nanowrimo, and made myself a cup of coffee and put it on my desk next to my laptop. (hey, writer, you recognize this foreshadowing?).

I’m not a morning person, but I was up and ready at 9 a.m. to OwN thE dAy. Little did I know the day would definitely own me, chew me up and spit me out.

I hadn’t even taken a sip of my coffee yet. Pudding hopped on my desk, which always makes me uneasy because there’s lots of knock-over-able stuff up there. Instead of going for my jewelry, though, she walked directly across my keyboard, because obviously she’s a better writer than me.

I tried to pick her up, she dodged my hand, and in so doing stepped her entire paw directly into my cup of coffee, knocking the whole thing over and drenching the keyboard of my 2017 Macbook Pro.

The tranquility of the morning disappeared in that moment and I am sorry to my roommates for what I did next, which was to start saying some obscenities and freak out. I picked up my laptop, flipped it upside-down and put it on a towel in the bathroom. “Turn it off! Turn it off!’ my roommate yelled (hi Nat, thanks for the help on this morning).

Even though I did turn it off, as I ran my towel over the keyboard trying to absorb the moisture, I kept hearing the boot-up sound of it turning on again. But the screen wasn’t turning on. All I could say was, “I’m done. It’s done. I’m done. I’m done.”

What my roommates woke up to on December 2, 2021. Sorry, guys.

Now, this wasn’t my first rodeo with liquid on a laptop. In my first year of university, I spilled some milk from my cereal on this same keyboard, on the trackpad, and a few days later it crapped out on me. I spent almost 700$ to fix it, which is why I wanted it to last me so long. I couldn’t believe I was back in this situation again so soon, except a million times worse and not really my fault.

To the Apple Store…

I gave my laptop to the Apple Store and they told me their repair estimate, which was the exact same number I paid to fix it in first year following the cereal mishap. They said if the liquid seeped through the hard drive, my data may be unrecoverable. I explained that I had some very important data on the hard

drive, and I didn’t want them to repair it if they would have to replace it. Then I left and waited. It was a terrible night and day of being on edge. Everyone around me tried to help me stay positive, but I had a terrible feeling. Nevertheless, I tried to keep calm because they said it could be two weeks before it was fixed, and I couldn’t live in that emotional and stressed state indefinitely. Other than the story that was at risk, I was also a week away from exams in my fourth year of university. To say I was stressed was an understatement.

Within 24 hours, I had received an email saying my laptop was ready for pickup. I knew at that moment that my laptop was dead. Everyone around me tried to convince me to keep an open mind and positive outlook, but I just knew I was done for. There was no way they could have fixed it so fast, which meant they didn’t fix it, which meant the laptop – and my story – were dead.

When I walked into the Apple Store and gave them my name, and the employee came back with my laptop and a piece of paper for me to sign. “Wait wait wait, what happened?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. She told me how I had requested no repair if the hard drive would have to be replaced and the data lost, which I did and it was. I started crying. She was very sweet and patient with me. She showed me a picture of the internal damage. Her suggestion to me was to contact a data retrieval centre to see what they could do. I ended up just signing for my laptop and left in tears.

Then, I cried. A lot.

More than I have cried in public since I was a little kid. I was absolutely sobbing in the mall and had to sit down in the middle of the hallway with people walking by. I just sat against the wall crying with my dead laptop cradled in my arms.

If you've been there, I feel you. It hurts.

I started Googling different data retrieval centres in the area. I found one that looked reputable with a really good retrieval rate, filled out the intake form, and sent them a 90$ deposit.

Immediately afterwards, a voice inside me said, Watch, you’re gonna give it to them and it will magically turn on. Hm. Maybe you should try that. So I did. And the freaking screen lit up.

I truly, truly couldn’t believe it, because the day prior I couldn’t get my laptop to turn on at all, and I assume the Apple repair people couldn’t either. Last time I damaged my laptop with liquid, it worked for a while afterwards and eventually pooched and never came back on. I had never heard of it going the other way around. But sure enough, despite drenching the keyboard with a whole cup of coffee, every key worked and so did the keypad. The screen worked and looked normal. All my data was still there.

It’s painful to think that if I had decided to cut my losses and keep my laptop, and let Apple replace the harddrive for 700$, I would have lost my story and all my other data forever.

Although my laptop’s functionality was miles above what I could have expected, I wasn’t out of the woods yet:

The only trace that the laptop had been damaged was a grey bar over the wifi symbol. When I hovered over it, it said ‘no hard drive detected’. So clearly some internal damage was done, and I had no idea how much time I had before my laptop failed on me. All my data was there, but with no data or Airdrop, I had no way of transferring it. What would you have done at this point? My first instinct – and my dad’s, when I first told him this story – was to start taking pictures of every single page. I still have a couple rows in my camera roll. Maybe you didn’t think pictures, maybe your brain went where my boyfriend’s did, which was arguably smarter: get a memory key. Except my Macbook 2017 only has one type of port that’s not for USB’s, and I was worried about where I’d find a compatible memory stick. I also knew I was on a timer; I had no idea why my laptop was inexplicably working, and no idea how long it would last. It could crap out before my eyes at any moment and I’d lose everything. I didn’t know they sold memory sticks at the Apple store, but they do – ones that are compatible with the ports in the Macbook 2017. Now you know that too. My boyfriend left me on the floor of the mall, still taking pictures of Scrivener pages, and went to the Apple Store. While I was crying and panicking, he was on his feet, ready to run and do anything and everything he could to help. I don’t know if I could have saved my story without him. I was able to transfer every Scrivener file and a few copies onto the new memory stick, as well as all my important school and work ressources. I held my computer open running through the Byward Market while the files transferred because I was afraid the laptop wouldn’t turn back on if I turned it off. I got all my files on the memory key in time to go to my friend’s engagement dinner that night. As of right now, the laptop still turns on, but i don’t expect that to last forever. I will likely sell it for parts – if anyone has experience doing that, I’d really appreciate your advice regarding where/how/to who/for how much. I had to get a new tablet – the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 – which was an unexpected bite out of my finances. There are some things I love about it (stylus compatibility) and some things I hate about it (spontaneous shut downs). I would be happy to do a full review if anyone was interested. Comment and let me know. To sum up, here are the morals I learned from this story:

1. DO Back up backup backup. Did you hear the story about how the animation team almost lost all of Toy Story when it was accidentally deleted, but an employee on maternity leave had a copy saved on her home computer, so it saved the whole movie? It’s important to have backups IN DIFFERENT PLACES. I did have several copies of my Scrivener file, but all on the same laptop. Every so often I emailed myself my updated work, but I definitely wasn’t consistent with that and probably only had about 5-10% of my words in my emails. Make sure you have copies of your work in the cloud or in your email, on two devices, and on a memory stick. Scrivener does NOT back your data up to a cloud, you have to do it yourself. Please, please, please don’t make the same mistakes I did, and backup NOW!

2. DO NOT jump the gun and get your hard drive replaced unless you’re positive your data is unretrievable – not just by Apple or whoever is repairing your device, but also by third-party data retrieval centres, or just by yourself turning it on. I didn’t even know data retrieval centres were a thing before this experience. If you use an Apple device and bring it to their store, be sure to specify you don’t want them fixing it unless your data is safe. And for the love of words, try to turn it on yourself.

3. DO be gentle and kind with yourself throughout this very emotional process. This is hard, and accidents and mistakes happen.

If I had lost this story, I don’t know when or how I would have rewritten it. (A/N from future Ren: HA! whoops) If at all. I would have been completely discouraged from writing, which would have been such a shame since I should still have been in my post-winning-Nano high.I have until the end of the month to finish my draft, and it’s going to be a challenge in addition to work and full-time university. With all I have going on this semester, I don’t think I would have had the energy to start this story again before the semester ended. Maybe I would have dropped the story indefinitely. I am so thankful Ambrosia’s story is still intact because I can’t wait to share it with the world. I hope this article taught you something and you’re able to learn from my mistakes.

Have you ever lost words? What happened? Did you save them? More importantly, how did you pick yourself back up afterwards? I would love to hear it.

Thank you so much for reading. I hope this blog post was useful for you. If you’d like to keep tabs with me you can find me on Instagram at @writewithren, and you can follow my YouTube channel here.

A/N CONT. : Hey, 2023 Ren here again! Anyways, as I was saying: This was the second zero-draft for Project Space aka my WIP JAR OF DISILLUSIONS. If you keep up with me, you may know that I wrote three first drafts for JAR OF DISILLUSIONS, and have done nothing with the first two drafts. That being said, I do think that losing this draft would have been pretty devastating to my consistent writing habits and my feelings towards writing at this point in time. Now, I write directly into Google Docs, so every letter is protected in the Cloud no matter what happens [knock on wood].

Thank you for reading. I hope this never happens to you!