The one hiccup on this little weekend vacation we took was the writing. I know, I know. It’s supposed to be a vacation, right? No work, all play. But I at least try to write while in the process of getting from here to there and back again. My normal method, since my handwriting is atrocious, is to bring along a PDA/wireless keyboard setup I’ve had for a few years now. Portable, small, and with some limited wireless internet access, it works well to take either on car rides, planes, or down to the nearest bookstore or coffee shop for some writing time away from home. Then, when I get back, I sync up the documents I worked on to save my progress.
So I brought it along for the time in the airports and got in almost four solid hours of writing in-between takeoffs, landings and terminal switching. Fleshed out several scenes nicely and polished off almost 3k words. It’s nice to see how the words flow when you are focused entirely on them.
Only problem is, the battery runs out after a while. I bring a second, fully charged battery just for this occasion. And it was just as we were landing in Oregon that the low-power warning light came on, and I decided to switch them out.
Imagine my disbelief and frustration when, in the process of switching batteries, the PDA decides to wipe itself. And I mean back to factory settings too. No files backups, no chance of recovering anything. Four hours of writing snatched away. I almost became that screaming toddler on the plane everyone hates to sit by.
Well, there was nothing I could do but pout. Even the software that I used to write one had been deleted, as it didn’t originally come with the device. My only recourse, and tiny relief, came from the fact that when I write a scene or chapter, once I’m done with it, the general course of events and dialogue stick in my head pretty well. So when we got home a couple days later, I spent a few hours reconstructing what had turned into cyber-vapor. The descriptions and all aren’t identical, but I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything important from what was originally there.
However, my next consideration comes in figuring out a better way to write while traveling–without resorting to longhand. It might be time to buy a new device, as this one’s failings have irked me one too many times. But what’s your method? Do you take a bunch of pens and notebooks? Your laptop? Sticky notes? Keep it all in your brain until you get home? Do tell.
I see that smile.
dude, data loss sucks like anything. I suggest get a wap/gprs connection on your cellphone. Write a document on the PDA, transfer it to cell through bluetooth or infrared, and email it to yourself.
Since a cellphone uses the phone spectrum for data transfer you do not have to look for wifi spots or internet cafes while on the go. Plus, when you transfer it to cellphone from the PDA, data is double backed up, and triple backed up if you email it.
I use the gmail app on my sony ericsson java phone to write and email stuff to a spare blog. Later when i get to my laptop i can use the data anyway i like 🙂
Hope this helped. And hey, no data on a machine is ever erased truly unless new data is written in its place, maybe you can use a data recovery software to get back the data. It will take someone more expert than me to give you those details 🙂
N
I feel your pain. If it had happened to me, I would have been screaming all right. No one would have mistaken me for a toddler though, because a toddler wouldn’t know the words I’d have used.
I am a computer neanderthal. I have a desk top and a lap top, but they can’t work together because one’s a PC with Word Perfect and the other is a Mac with Word. It wouldn’t be a problem if Word could convert to Word Perfect…
Nothingman’s advice sounds good to me. I have a thumb drive that I back up to constantly. Like every time I pause to take a breath. And the PC has a zip drive. So I save to the hard drive, save to the zip drive, then save to the thumb drive. I’ve lost files before. The time it takes to back things up isn’t nearly as much trouble as trying to recreate hours of work.
I have an Alphasmart–lightweight, works on a PDA-type program–really long battery. That’s my two-cents.
And–sorry I didn’t say this first–losing work sucks. It has happened to me. I hates it, hates it, hates it. Just like I hates spiders.
That sucks. At least you would able to pull it from memory and not lose anything major. Wish I could do that. 🙂
I stick with the good old notebook when traveling. But my handwriting is legible. My problem is when I can’t find my pen in my bag and get stuck with the pencil. Which fades, super fast, and gets smudged easier than pen. (I tend to write random stuff when traveling and look back at it later, really later. That’s why the pencil fading is a problem.
My friend writes on her blackberry thingie (it’s not a blackberry, she gets mad if you call it that) and emails what she’s written to herself every time she has to stop, to prevent losing anything.