Just a little venting, perhaps some of you can relate:

I have been hacking away at a novel since November. Making good progress, and I'm very pleased with the story (all of which was given to me in a single flash one pharma night).....then my stupid computer crashes yesterday and I lose it all: about two hundred pages, poof, gone, vanishing into the electric ether.

sigh.

This is the one thing I've always dreamed about: to finally complete a novel worthy of publication (I've written one novel before, in 19 days, when I was 23: it was horrible, but it showed me I could do it--I'm now 33).

But, the show must go on: I hooked up a new computer and started all over again, working from memory and notes alone.....wrote the first 1000 words yesterday (again! but a different, better intro)....only a hundred thousand words to go.....

Lesson learned: back up those files on external devices!!! (and here I am ranting when I should be playing catch up)

harsh, that's a nightmare.

I can imagine how horrible that must be, im compiling trip reports for a book and would be devastated if I lost them all.

I guess on the bright side the next version will be bigger and better.

Isn't that quote attributed to Truman Capote and not Hemingway?

Here's something to cheer you up:

A filmmaker/screenwriter friend of mine always writes a first draft, then locks it up in a drawer and REWRITES IT IN ITS ENTIRETY! He has done this with probably a dozen screenplays, and he says the second version is invariably much better, not even comparable to his first draft. He said that originally he would try and fuse the two drafts, taking the best of each, but he realized that he was taking so little from the original drafts that he decided that instead of locking them in a drawer he would send them to his brother with a little note:

"Read and throw out".

He could not bring himself to throw the first draft out himself, so he passed the buck and built in a three to four week delay before the point of no return. Only once did he call his brother to stop him, because he could only half remember some dialogue that he was writing into a new scene.

The one thing my friend does not know, is that his brother was reading the first drafts, and then putting them in a drawer. He told me he couldn't bring himself to throw them out either!

The point is that your second draft is going to be much better than your first, especially because you don't have it around as a point of reference.

I wish i had my friend's cojones. I rewrite my stuff (one screenplay had 10 drafts), but I could NEVER start from zero unless I had to...

Good luck!!

JBArk

EDIT: apparently there is some contention as to who the quote belongs to. One source wrote that Capote said "Writing is easy. You just sit at the typewriter & open a vein." What I had heard was that in a response to a journalist's asking what his process was, Capote responded that he sat at the typewriter in front of the blank page until his forehead started sweating blood. I think I'll stick with my version - it's more graphic!

One tip: DROPBOX.

Even if your computer and all other devices crash you can still retrieve the documents.
Easy and very handy to use.

I am lazy: I just found the quote on Google images and liked it; I have not actually read any Hemingway or Capote.

This is actually the third draft; I started the second after having a better idea on approach and format. The second draft is the one I lost, I still have about 120 pages of the first draft saved on my external hard drive. But you're friend has the right idea: I didn't use the first draft much at all for the second draft, and the third draft is turning out better than the second. All ways that silver lining

This is why I still opt to use pens and paper for first drafts and important notes.

All that's been said about successive drafts being much improved is very true, however. I guess I'm a bit megalomaniacal in that I hang onto handwritten first drafts in hopes that if I publish something truly special I can perhaps sell the first drafts for ridiculous amounts of money, or pass them onto family when I die.

Imagine having the handwritten first draft of your favorite novel? That's a treasure beyond price.

I am not a computer wiz but can't you take your hard drive to some one for file recovery. If it was not "clean erased" it should still be on your hard drive. At least most of it.

Good luck