
Writing a Novel in 24-Hours: My One-Day NaNoWriMo Experiment - amayne
https://blogbyemail.com/post/21466e803a6e90ef6ea2617e
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ntw1103
a very interesting challenge. Did you have and process for making sure your
work wasn't lost in progress?

I once felt particularly inspired, and wrote 20,000 words in a day, I had been
hitting ctrl+s all day, and after reaching a good stopping point, I hit it
once more. Then I heard the Seagate click of death, 20' words gone in an
instant. I thought I was doing well for backups, my laptop was scheduled to do
a diff backup with my server, and other computers ad midnight. This had saved
me in the past, But not this time.

I still have yet to try re-writing what was lost that day, despite authoring
other works. It is too disheartening.

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amayne
Yikes!

I used Google Recorder which creates a real-time transcription and an audio
file. After each chapter I'd back them up to Google Drive.

For my normal writing, I use Scrivener which is autosaved to Dropbox.

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ntw1103
I'm glad you were safe from my type of disaster. Dropbox or Nextcloud are
amazing for their instant backup ability. My loss happened about a year before
Dropbox launched. Thanks for sharing. :)

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amayne
I'm the author of the post. I'll be checking in here throughout the day if
anyone has any questions and walks to talk about writing processes, etc.

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larnmar
That was a fun read, but... not even an extract from the final novel?

~~~
amayne
Fair point. It's an unedited mess and not my best work. As an example, here's
what the start of it looks like right now:

Nobody knows what to tell you what a funeral. Especially when it's your own
parents who died in a murder suicide. Everybody just sort of looks at you and
stares and maybe stumbles through. I'm sorry, or let me know if there's
anything I can do to help. What the fuck can they do to help? What the fuck
are they sorry for? My dad's the one to blame. He's the one that took the
shotgun blast to my mom and stomach in the face, and then shot his own fucking
brains out. He's the one that needs to be sorry. What can you do to help? I
don't know. Build a fucking time machine that help. I try not to be angry. But
it's hard not to be every face. Everybody who looks at all the swollen eyes of
the tears. Some are really I think all of it is just too much. I don't want to
be here. I want to be anywhere else but here.

But I just don't know where that is.

So I just sit in the corner as people come up to me and tell me how bad they
feel. I just shake my head, shake their hand, take a hug and want it or not,

and just sit back down

and stare at the closed coffin. Where my mom's bodies lane. God damn it
couldn't even have an open coffin. Nope. No dad had to shoot her in the face.

Who saw that coming?

I didn't

say it was a surprise was a goddamn understatement. But here I am. 15 orphan
orphan 15 Are you really an orphan? When you're 15 I mean, I guess so. But I
always thought of orphans as babies and small children and Harry Potter.

That doesn't fit me.

