Author Nightmares

[Leyelle]

You go back to reread a chapter you wrote weeks or months ago to realize there was a typo in it.

You received several new comments on your story, only to find out they're all spam.

You just released a chapter of your story with a new character and someone unsubscribes.

[abigaillmartin]

Typos. It’s always typos.

Or even worse…

“Hey Abby you missed a spot.”

🤣

Or in my case…

Inaccurate!

Because Elsie is historical but it’s also steampunk so it’s alternate history technically but I’m still scared people will point out inaccuracies. Does that make sense? No. But do I still worry about it? Yes!

[Leyelle]

well, i think it still makes sense. my story is a fantasy novel, but two of the mains were born in the 40s, so trying to make sure their lives are accurate time-line wise is still trippy for me

[ThunderChicken]

Finding something in your story that contradicts something else in your story. Six months after publishing it.

[Leyelle]

It's time to rewrite the head-canon.

I've had to do this a couple times and rewire it so it DOES work. It helps if you have a fallible narrator (which usually works best in first-person.) Like...why was my female lead's now mother in law able to offer to adopt her in her teens after the death of her mother if her father was still alive? that turned into a pretty messy sub plot/story element.

[NickRowler]

I sometimes feel tempted to fix some of the major art issues in my series Crow's Worth (kids with giant heads, word bubbles in weird places). But this would also involve having to import them to CSP and reformat the pages, which would take way too much time.

I also have a chapter where I lost the original files, so I have no way to do simple edits without just having to redraw everything.

[supriyashukla2398]

The worst and most scary nightmare is when people unsubscribe from your novel.

[skidiggy]

Solar flare / EMP wipes out computer... Two days before you decide to print a hard copy for yourself.

[ArtGremlin]

Back when I was working on August I really felt this, because it was supposed to be set in 2001 and I didn’t exist back then, so I didn’t know how to make it feel 2001… I do know a lot about tv shows that came out then.

[abigaillmartin]

Me: Does this feel turn of the century?

I feel that

Elsie is steampunk after all but decided for the fashion to be historical and not mainstream steampunk fashion.

[ThunderChicken]

I have copies on my stories and art stored locally (one on my computer’s hard drive, one on a thumb drive) and on the cloud (MS OneDrive). The cloud version is actually my “working” version, since I can access it from anywhere.

[KevinReijnders]

Ngl, I hate working from cloud storage (or internal server systems for that matter). There's so much more risk of things going wrong, plus working locally is much faster and responsive.

Side note, I hate One Drive. Legit uninstall it every single time

That said, I am considering setting up a NAS-based private cloud for myself some time in the future. Just so I don't have to fuck around with thumbsticks and external drives as much.

[JoshRaed]

"And then she put all the heroes in a big bag and dragged them towards the villains lair"

[skidiggy]

Your way makes excellent sense. I am a goblin who hoards printed copies of my published works. I do a backup every couple of weeks to the cloud and an external SSD, but that's about it.

[ThunderChicken]

I only use OneDrive because I got a free year of Office 365 and a terabyte of Onedrive storage when I bought my Surface Pro 8. I’ve since become dependent on it (I tried writing with OpenOffice and LibreOffice and hated both). When it came time to renew after the year was up it was 50% off so I renewed. Something like $60 for a year. I don’t even have that Surface anymore.

The nice thing about working from the cloud is knowing that if my house burns down, or it floods, or gets robbed, or whatever, I will still have the newest, freshest copy of my work. On the off chance that something takes Microsoft down I’ll still have my local copies that are a week old at best. Now, if my house burns AND Microsoft goes down, I’m screwed. Wait, no, I still have my stuff on Tapas, so not all would be lost!

[KevinReijnders]

Microsoft has been trying to get me on office 365 for a while now. But I bought a licence a while back so I have no need for their subscription service haha.

Honestly, when I can I try to avoid cloud services alltogether. I just don't like the idea of my working files being on some companies hard drive.

I much rather spend a hundred bucks in a hefty portable HDD to do the trick, or upgrade my PC's storage. If I end up switching PCs I can take the drives with me.

[ThunderChicken]

I learned my lesson after spending several weeks scanning 70 years worth of family photos. There were thousands. They took up most of a 750GB solid state drive.

And then that drive died. Quite suddenly and quite thoroughly. Probably two weeks after doing all that work, I was unable to access the drive. Computer wouldn’t even recognise that it was plugged in. Tried installing it internally. No soap. Sent off to Crucial (the manufacturer). They told me that the drive was toast and that nothing could be recovered. They did send me a shiny new drive - in fact they upgraded it to a 1TB model since the 750GB one was no longer available. But I lost it all. After that I am meticulous about hacking my stuff up.

The photos? I still have the original copies. I just don’t have the heart or desire to sit down and scan them all again. This may change as boredom sets in while I’m off work for two months with this broken arm though.

[KevinReijnders]

Damn, how many photos were that? I'm assuming the average size of a photo is what? 5 Mb? That must have been close to 150.000 photos then

But shit like that is precisely why I have back-ups of back-ups (and want to invest in a NAS system) haha.

[2DLenzy]

Wanting to create a realistic/historic war backstory for a char after a year of publishing the story, but realizing they're the wrong age by like a decade.

Inconsistencies with timeline/seasons. I never bothered to create a calendar of events and I'm regretting it now.

Currently: Making a horror special whilst trying to keep it short(not really) and get it out on time. Or considering publishing next Halloween and do something simpler. (Might be mid October when I decide)

Juggling more than one project, and of different types (comic, animation, 3D, writing...life) and stalling on a few...

[skidiggy]

Oh gahd, new terror unlocked. Who's for ordering a new PSSD and doing a double backup to the cloud and solid state drives?

Also, get well soon! Wishing you a speedy recovery!