Lost Words

It is a moment now enshrined in the history of literature, but James Joyce once threw the partially completed manuscript for ‘Stephen Hero’ into the fire in a fit of rage. Nothing was salvaged and Joyce eventually sat down to write the novel again from page one. In the process, the novel transformed into the classic ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’. Who knows whether the final novel lacks some unique phrases or gems of literary brilliance, forever lost to the fire? What genius writings were burned, never to be fully recreated in the finally published version? Joyce only had himself to blame for the pain many writers experience when they lose their work, but disaster struck me this week as I finalised a guest post, now available at the 'Smithereens' blog.

I wrote the post on a couple of lunch breaks, tapping away on my trusty Asus Eee between mouthfuls of creamy fettuccini. The document was saved to the USB flash drive that permanently lived in my pocket. My entire blog was backed up on this drive, allowing me to plug it into any USB port and access recent drafts or unfinished posts for a quick burst of creativity. Very convenient. .

Except when the universe hates me.

Disk-Struction

It was when I tried to submit the post to Daniel at ‘Smithereens’ that this little piece of technology decided to screw around with me. On trying to attach the finished Word file to an email, the computer told me that the drive wasn’t accessible and the entire disk seemed to crash repeatedly, looping through error messages of increasing alarm. After a few attempts to access the file, I realised I was now in damage control. This was after I tried to solve the problem by backing up the files onto another USB drive, only to corrupt that as well. Here’s a tip for any other idiots like me: if something is causing your drive to crash and you don’t know which file it is, don’t copy them all onto another drive.

So now I had two crashed USB drives for all my efforts. Go, me!

That evening I used some diagnostic software to access and back up every file on the disk – except it was unable to access the blog post I was really after. It stubbornly refused to be saved, in any format and on any disk. And so, with terrible foreboding, I was forced to open a fresh word document and start all over again.

Square One

The problem with losing work is that I always find it difficult to recapture the vibrancy and freshness of the original. To me, every line is now tired and cliched – if I can remember it at all. Often I stop, knowing that a particularly funny turn of phrase has now eluded me. The process is painful, like a forced, torturous déjà vu, as I try to replace today’s inspiration and creativity with dim memories of the inspiration and creativity I had a day before.

Of course, my fears are usually unfounded. Realistically, often the new draft is as equally worthy as the version lost to the void. Sometimes, the new draft discovers some fresh tangents, adding more life and additional research or information. Despite these benefits, satisfaction is rare. The nagging feeling is that something was lost – a word, a phrase or an idea – that elevated the original over the new.

Daniel received his guest post and was certainly happy to include it on his great blog. He did catch some errors in proofreading that had slipped through in my frustration and polished a phrase or two that had suffered under my jaded eye. Having Daniel give it the once over provided the objectivity that I could no longer give it, which is all good.

I write this now on my Eee, saving it to a fresh thumb drive straight out of the packaging. I’ll be backing it up at the earliest opportunity too. Yet, despite every precaution I take, sometimes fate loves to pull the plug from the wall or misplace a page or cover a script with cat vomit. No doubt I will be faced with lost words again.