OMG! The other night I thought I lost some of the pages in my manuscript in Word. Shortly after freaking out and then screaming I realized it was all backed up on a flash drive and everything was good. It was my own fault because I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. I think I accidently dragged the mouse over part of what I couldn't see above the screen view, and when I hit delete on the one word I wanted deleted, the whole section went with it! I was so scared. Be more careful, I told myself.

It’s not the first time I’ve lost some of my writing. Oh, no… Once I lost a whole first chapter. That wasn’t backed up, in fact, it was before flash drives, thumb drives, or online storage was invented! When I rewrote it, it actually turned out better than the first attempt. Whew, that was lucky. Before that I lost a total completed manuscript. It was printed out in hard copy, but I had to retype it all back in my computer. Can you imagine how long that took? The only good thing about that was it was easy to edit and revise as I went along. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone! It was a horrible thing to go through.

A writer losing words is like losing a limb. Editing and revising is so difficult for us because we have to get rid of words. Our words put together to create more words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. I never want to lose words again, but I probably will. The only thing to do is make sure to back up everything I write, and I would issue that warning to you also. Back up, back up, save, save….