Most frustrating moment as a writer

[Cophet]

Okay. Here's the thing. I'm typing up ideas for a project I want to start. Lots of notes, lots of good notes, but good notes are not saved notes. The fates, those sadistic old hags that killed MacBeth, sent a power surge my way. Hours of plot, characterization, setting and betrayal, down the drain.

So I ask you, friends. Feed me your amusing tales of woe. I fear only schadenfreude will heal this hurt.

I have, by the way, learned my lesson, and am now saving every few minutes. My keyboard learned its lesson, too; it took a minute to get all the keys back in their places.

[Murphy's Stunt Double]

I still have in my head the bones of a story I began writing almost 15 years ago, on a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk, which did not make it through an international move and computer upgrade. I have no idea where that disc is, but the story that is on it was good, and every time I try to recreate it, it comes out differently. Grrrrrrrr....

[Cophet]

See now, that makes me feel better.

[twinswin123]

I wrote the first half of the story. Printed it and forgot to save. then my dog seriously, not even joking, pissed on it.   Now i cant even rewrite it without thinking about dog piss

[Murphy's Stunt Double]

What kind of dog to you have TW?


If he were mine, he'd be a eunich by now.

[twinswin123]

I dont think id go that far.

But its a golden retriever mixed with collie

[Murphy's Stunt Double]

Sounds beautiful.

Sorry, back on topic...

[twinswin123]

 
We have a knack for hijacking


But i feel your pain Cophet
Cophec?
Cofek?

I dont remember.  thats scary

[Cophet]

Cophet it is, from CPhT, the appellate for any Certified Pharmacy Technician.

Is MacBeth anyone else's favorite pre-Tolkien work? Whenever I have some small triumph, I like to proclaim "No man of woman born!" and see who gets the irony.

[Cooper]

I have this big fantasy world-changing story in my head for a year now.  I have the "new race of humans" written, drawn, and tucked away in a book size Moleskin notebook.  The major events are there and just starting to think up the magic concepts for the race.  There is one thing thats keeping me from ever making it a reality:

Where the frack to start it?
And I mean characters, settings, history, and or course, plot

So basically I have writer's block added with college and work..  I do have a short story cooking just to get me started, but thats it.

[Murphy's Stunt Double]

Have you read JB's recent blog on organizing your story? Best advice I've seen in ages. Go here. http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/

Hope it helps!

[LizW65]

I wrote the prologue and extensive notes for a story, had all kinds of research materials at hand, the works.  Then I went and spilled a glass of wine on my laptop -- presto, no more story, no way of retrieving it.  Keep telling myself it was just as well, as it was a crappy idea anyway.  This does not work, BTW.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Most frustrating recentish moment ?

Being fairly far along in planning for an alternate history mostly about a very different World War II, with a frame set in 1963 in which the protagonist was telling the WWII-period story while being stalked by an assassin from the occult-flavoured faction of the SS; when suddenly one day the relatively obscure unpleasant RL individual I had intended to use as the assassin gets elected Pope, and something that would have been a minor bit of incidental snark suddenly changes weight drastically.  It leaves me in a lot of sympathy for the changes made in Stross' The Atrocity Archive, which in its original 1999 magazine publication used as its "obscure villain nobody would have heard of" Osama bin Laden.

[Franzeska]

I know it seems like a big deal right now, but lots of famous authors have lost entire manuscripts and had to rewrite from scratch.  Some of them even thought it improved the final work.  I seem to recall a story about Steinbeck's dog destroying the first draft of Of Mice and Men, for example, and it's certainly a much tighter work than most of the soporific tomes I suffered through in school.

[LizW65]

I know it seems like a big deal right now, but lots of famous authors have lost entire manuscripts and had to rewrite from scratch.  Some of them even thought it improved the final work.  I seem to recall a story about Steinbeck's dog destroying the first draft of Of Mice and Men, for example, and it's certainly a much tighter work than most of the soporific tomes I suffered through in school.

Sharon Kay Penman's sole 900+ page manuscript copy of The Sunne In Splendour was stolen out of her car and she had to re-write the entire thing from scratch.