Paksworld

Short version:  All my files are gone.

Longer version:   That includes: books, short fiction, poetry, letters, nonfiction, addresses, etc.  Character lists for each piece of fiction (for continuity, very handy to have organized lists for another book or story set in the same universe–by organization, by location, by genealogy, by status (for those who die in the course of  a book) , etc.   Place names, locations, descriptions.   For some, salient physical and historical notes:  age at marriage, age at birth of children, age at which significant injury/illness occurs.  Etc.

Gone. All of it.  Things in print are still there, of course, but as stories, not as organized files where I had been able to look up things like how old Character A was when their younger sibling was born or an older sister died, things that affect characters’ growth & development, deep motivations, reactions, etc.

How it happened doesn’t really matter, except to me and my tech assistant, trying to be sure it never happens again.  A lof it is not recoverable at all, given my aging brain with its memory holes here and there.  Not without stopping writing new stuff to try to rebuild the research library of the old files.  Hours of work spread over nearly 40 years built the accumulated mass,  which  went way beyond what was obviously in the books.

So I have the complete printout of one of last summer’s short stories, and a printout of part of another.   I’m working this week to get them back into digital form, into multiple forms of storage, one of which I hope will still work in 5 or 10 years.   I know people who have whole or partial drafts of others.   I’m not dwelling on how bad this is, but focusing (narrowly for now) on what I can do, which is work from paper to digital, rebuild a file structure, start filling, and at the same time produce clean texts for publication when the next collection should be out.  Not going into gory details because they make my head hurt and take time.  Takeaway: Bad break, but writer is not sitting around moaning…writer is, and will be, at work.