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This week I had a bit of a setback.

I’m a big believer of saving in multiple places. I’ve never lost a cache of stories (thank the gods), but I have misplaced notebooks or sd cards or entire drives. It’s nerve wracking trying to piece together words and scenes you know you’ve already set together. It’s also crushing to rebuild.

It happened this week.

I have things backed up on Dropbox for now, but it’s not accessible everywhere.  For the sake or portability, I also have things on a 32G JumpDrive. I love it for its portability and its size and the fact that I can run Scrivener off it, something I’m not sure with any confidence I can do from DropBox.

I’d set up new templates, transferred over 3 novels, 7 short stories, and started revisions, you know, the usual rare spurt of productivity, on to the drive because while I know what I should be working on, I get ideas for all sorts of things. When it turned up missing on Monday I was as calm as I could be, considering the skeleton of what I’d been working on was still on DropBox.

But the revisions, you know.

So I decided to start over, and transferred files over to another 8G SD card and tackled my priorities from a different angle. Then in my rush to leave work on Friday, I left it in a drawer. I was beginning to think the world was against me, and I wrote this weekend off. Yes, it sounds like an excuse to me, too.

Yes, I do a lot of drafts in notebooks and pads of paper, but I need organization, which is easily 66 percent of me getting started, and I’m a visual person.

So I wrote off this weekend, and set about to do other things. Shopping, nails, hair, stuff like that. Cat food, polish, groceries, time outs

After And then I found my drive, sitting there in the trunk of my car