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A month ago I went on a hunt for missing pages.

Every Writer’s Nightmare.

I was getting ready for summer travel and activities and wanted to move some of my work to my laptop. Two of my books are fairly far along. One needs a rewrite that seemed simple and straight forward until I printed it and got overwhelmed at the scope. I know what I have to do, but I am not sure where to begin. I made notes and organized and imported that to my laptop.

Finding the other book was not so straight forward.

I believed I had 197 pages of a probably 250 page manuscript. I knew clearly the last few scenes I had written but the drafts I found were 190 pages. “Maybe it’s a font thing,” I thought.  I transferred it to my laptop, printed out a hard copy and away I went.

As you may know from reading  this post,  I was reading the end of that manuscript just a few days ago.

I got to the end of my reread where I had written down all the characters to make sure I had them all available and my draft ended early.

Those scenes that are in the missing 7 pages are simply not there.

They aren’t on my home computer. They might be printed out somewhere in my house but I believed I had everything on my computer.

My mind started to go in the wrong direction.

“What if I can’t rewrite? What if I never find those pages?” Then I just took a deep breath.” If I have to write it over I will. If all I can do at this point is research, ok.” I refused to panic.

So I was sitting there, breathing, racking my brain and I realized something marvelous. The desk top computer in this house is mine from 7 years ago. On a whim I sit down at it and start to search for the manuscript by name. We know it was one I was working on 7 years ago, but how old is the computer? How long ago did I write those pages? Was it over a Christmas break or a summer trip?

The keyboard needed batteries.

Batteries in –I hit search and up pops all the drafts plus independent material, including those scenes. I am thrilled. I can’t email them to myself  or print them due to the ancient nature of this versions of word and mail. So the next few days I will sit here and copy them into my laptop. Luckily it is 2-3 pieces that are 5-9 pages long. I can’t believe my good fortune.

I am in just the right place at exactly the right time.

I started last night and it got me so excited to finish this book I cannot tell you! I am back in.

Tips–

1. Be careful when you change computers that you don’t leave anything behind
2. Never panic because there is always something you can write or research