A Creator's Greatest Nightmare

[alexlcuri07]

So it happened guys.

You know, you stay up late, work your butt off to find the perfect words or draw that perfect line on your digital work and then poof. You open your device to find that it has magically disappeared. (And before someone asks the inevitable--yes, I saved)

Feel free to share your heart-wrenching experiences below. Just don't mind me as I internally scream and cry.

[DiscountedArtist]

Firealpaca autosaves, so if your computer dies or something you'l be able to leave off where you were. And, when you close the program it asks if you want to save your work if you haven't saved yet. So I haven't had technical problems yet.

[sxxaint]

i mean this is like the pinnacle of heart-wrenching experiences

I had this pretty emotional scene that I'd written just right - held up even on re-reads - and i was copying half the novel into a new document for ease of navigation, meant to cut it off just after that scene but i got something mixed up in the copying and deleted it from both the old and the new documents

[alexlcuri07]

That's what Word is supposed to do. Except for some reason it won't sink correctly with my OneDrive or auto save on my desktop. It's been a recurring issue since I bought a new Word subscription and I am not happy about it.

I am glad that you have not experienced this level of suffering though. May you forever continue to experience that bliss.

[IndigoShirtProd]

Yea that sounds like it sucks, but I have all my files backed up to my google drive using back up and sync, so I don't worry about that any more.

[Mira_Astralis]

I tried to do a fun drawing-in-greyscale challenge, and since photoshop is still confusing, i accidentally changed the colors to greyscale, instead of having my computer in greyscale. I tried turning off the greyscale thing after i spent like, an hour on it, but nope, i was never coloring with colors, only shades of grey the whole time... sigh

[WolfUnderTheMoon89]

sounds like ctr z could have helped there... not sure though

[DualDragons]

When I was very new to comic-making, I didn't know the cloud existed and just saved all my pages on my laptop.
One day, it crashed. Lost everything.
That is when I stopped with that one comic.

[WolfUnderTheMoon89]

i use Google docs with auto safe. havent lost a thing in two novels

[sxxaint]

i did it without really comparing and only realised when i did an editing run and i was like 'wait a minute......'

by which time it was by far too late

[WolfUnderTheMoon89]

ah damn
Im sorry it happend

[alexlcuri07]

That's tragic. My fan was out in my old PC and the motherboard essentially exploded. I was lucky to have what scraps were left of my docs on my Google Drive.

[MeltingCORE]

Noooo! Omg, I'm sorry you lost some of your hard work.

It ended up being ok, but I think the worst for me was when my old laptop got corrupted and I thought I had lost the "Red Shift" manuscript. (I hadn't backed it up onto a thumbdrive or onedrive yet...) I actually cried pretty hard ngl. This was before the work was online... Aaaah, my bf saved me though... He helped me fix the issues but omg. So much stress!

[nathanKmcwilliams]

Oh jeez. That's THE WORST. I used to make AMV's and I lost my fair share of videos due to hardware problems. Nothing worse than spending 8 hours on syncing Godzilla clips up to the Hampster Dance only to have your computer freeze and then...die. FOR GOOD.

(Mind you...this was before THE CLOUD. On Windows XP. Using WINDOWS MOVIE MAKER.)

[375]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO that honestly sucks and makes me wanna cry I'm sorry for your loss.

I have one story similar to that except I had to write this story for my creative writing class and I had been struggling with it for hours. None of the words would come out right and then all of a sudden, my computer disconnected my mouse and keyboard. No problem right? Wrong. I was writing the thing in Notepad. Not to mention shortly after rebooting my pc, the power went out in my house, taking everything away from me AGAIN so I kinda gave up.

[NickRowler]

I had computer problems about 2 years ago and lost the OG files of all my work from the last year or two. I was in the middle of working on a comic and poof all gone. I was so upset I hardly drew for a year and ended up rewriting the whole thing to avoid PTSD.

I also dealt with something 10 years ago during my first webcomic where I cut up my drawing hand and could not draw without bleeding everywhere

[AVXP]

Hard Drive failure.
Bad enough on its own- worse when it's your fault.

The side panel on my computer was open because of the heat and I spilled soda in the case.
Lost a lot of material.

Lesson learned.

[alexlcuri07]

@AVXP

[foxnflames]

I had the same happen to me early on. Typed out a good 2k words, inspiration was flowing. I know I pressed save SEVERAL times, only to put in my USB the next day and it wasn’t there. I went home on my lunch break, thinking it saved on my laptop instead. Nope I think I cried some frustration out. So I had to remember what I wrote then catch up to finish the chapter.

Also tried to do another cover and ended up getting so frustrated I deleted the whole thing

[DasIstWunderblyat]

I might have different story than losing unsaved content it fits the title but IDK if it belongs here.

My creator's greatest nightmare happened when I was around seven.

I wrote a short horror story about an orphaned girl named Mary (the only western girl name I can think off back then) who was chased by zombified monkeys on the way to her grandfather's house. I had and ending of Mary dying in the end because of the monkeys' assault on her. All was done, I put my pencil and paper down. Time for a nap.

I checked my story back, everything is still the same except the end. There was an extra scene of Mary being woken up by her grandfather from the nightmare; so all of the story was just a dream. It was not my wonky seven years old handwriting. I asked my parents and they said "That is how the story ends, right? It's Mary's nightmare." I just let it slide off because I was confused and not wanting to stir shit by accusing them, yet I am 100% sure I had the ending Mary died.

I have just realized how bad it is as a creator to be treated like that; this case is might be just a small problem, but many creators out there are being censored and unable to create what they want. Probably the main reason was because my parents thought having a cute girl main character dying is too much for a seven years old silly writing. That is also why I never show my writing/drawing to them. If only they asked or told I should not make Mary die it would be better, but they straightforwardly alter it without my knowledge and acting like I did it.