Writers who have lost all their work

[DanielBenoit]

Make me feel better.
Anybody know of any writers who've lost the entirety of a work and have gotten over it? I know that James Joyce lost the first draft of "Portrait of an Artist" when he threw it in the fire in a fit of anger.


(crap, I've posted this in the wrong section. Forgive me mods, I'm not in my right mind at the moment)

[NickAdams]

Ernest Hemingway: his first wife, Haley, lost the manuscript for In Our Time (and perhaps some of Sun also Rises) on a train.

Lose something you were working on?

[DanielBenoit]

Lose something you were working on?

Oooh you don't know the half of it. http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=9109

:rage::crash::crash::crash::rage:

[Lokasenna]

Always have a back-up made... its just not worth the heartache. When I wrote my first novel, I was so paranoid that I not only saved it on to a re-writable cd, but also kept a hard copy.

You just know that if it all went up in smoke, you could never reproduce it in quite the same way.

[DanielBenoit]

Always have a back-up made... its just not worth the heartache. When I wrote my first novel, I was so paranoid that I not only saved it on to a re-writable cd, but also kept a hard copy.

You just know that if it all went up in smoke, you could never reproduce it in quite the same way.

Yeah I had multiple thumb-drives, it's just that my works were so immense that it was quite hard to keep on updating them, until eventually I stopped being paranoid. :rage:

[Janine]

Yeah I had multiple thumb-drives, it's just that my works were so immense that it was quite hard to keep on updating them, until eventually I stopped being paranoid. :rage:

Daniel, did you HD crash or freezeup? Don't panic! I had this happen and my computer was totally useless; however, if you take it to a professional they can take out the HD and they can get your files off and save them. I was lucky enough to save mine. It did not cost too much. Take it to Best Buy's team and I am sure they can burn all to a DVD. I took mine to Circuit City and they did it easily.

[Eryk]

John Steinbeck had to rewrite Of Mice and Men after his dog chewed up half of the only existing manuscript.

[Jozanny]

I've never lost everything, but seem to always be playing catch up with pc issues. Keep a hard copy too if possible, but even there, between my dead cat dying in 06 and his replacements coming in and wrecking my studio, as kittens they shredded a lot of my originals.

I suspect it will take me another two years to return to where I was before my mother died and I had my burn accident.

But Daniel, listen to Janine, she is right. I have done the dumbest and stupidest things between desktop failure and laptop adaptation, but Best Buy and Geek Squad always fix me.

I back up to an external drive about every two weeks.

Toni Morrison lost her originals in a fire. Chin up :)!

[Buh4Bee]

The hard drive is the place to check to see if it dead. If it has failed you can plug it into a functional hard drive and see if you can retrieve docs. If that doesn't work there are more advanced tools.

[Lokasenna]

Anyone seen the episode of Blackadder where they burn Dr Johnson's dictionary? I'm being vaguely reminded of it for some reason.

J: There is no copy, sir.

E: No copy?

J: No, sir. Making a copy is like fitting wheels to a tomato, time consuming
and completely unnecessary.

E: But what if the book got lost?

J: I should not lose the book, sir, (stands, coffee cup in hand, approaching
Edmund menacingly) and if any other man should, I would tear off
his head with my bare hands and feed it to the cat! (breaks coffee cup
by squeezing)

[mona amon]

From Wikipedia -


The French Revolution: A History was written by the Scottish essayist, philosopher, and historian Thomas Carlyle.

The three-volume work, first published in 1837 (with a revised edition in print by 1857), charts the course of the French Revolution from 1789 to the height of the Reign of Terror (1793-4) and culminates in 1795.

A massive undertaking which draws together a wide variety of sources, Carlyle's history -- despite the unusual style in which it is written -- is considered to be an authoritative account of the early course of the Revolution.

Carlyle happened upon the idea of writing a general history of the French Revolution when John Stuart Mill, a friend of his, found himself caught up in other projects and unable to meet the terms of a contract he had signed with his publisher for just such a work. Mill therefore proposed that Carlyle produce the work instead; Mill even sent his friend a library of books and other materials concerning the Revolution, and by 1834 Carlyle was working furiously on the project. When he had at last completed his epic account, Carlyle sent his only completed manuscript of the book to Mill, whose maid famously mistook it for trash and had it burned. It was said that Carlyle then rewrote the entire manuscript from memory, achieving what he described as a book that came "direct and flamingly from the heart."

I'm sorry you lost your work, DanielBenoit. :(

[1n50mn14]

I had my grandmother tear up the entirety of FOUR notebooks once, for reasons we won't get into. I had a hard copy, nothing online/computer. So I do know how it feels, but you can likely get your files recovered at Staples or some other such shop.

[prendrelemick]

Garrison keillor left his first novel on a train. I dont think he ever found it.


Alistair Cooke's secretary threw out his diaries whist sorting out the accounts. A lifetimes observations gone forever.

[DanielBenoit]

Alistair Cooke's secretary threw out his diaries whist sorting out the accounts. A lifetimes observations gone forever.

Oh God what a nightmare that must've been!

[prendrelemick]

Oh God what a nightmare that must've been!

At least posterity was spared its serialization in The Times!:lol:

He told his secretary that what she had done was so unredeemingly terrible, that they would never mention it again.

[Niamh]

my sister formatted our old old computer about seven years ago and never gave me prior notice and wiped 200 pages of a story on me. the scene that followed was very reminisant of Little Women.

[AuntShecky]

Oh, I am so sorry, Daniel. You must've been heartbroken.
Maybe you could remember some of it? Perhaps some written notes from which you can rebuild?

I saved -- or thought I did -- my incomplete novel (7 yrs in the writing) on a CD. There was a message that the files were in fact "burned" on it. But then I couldn't open or read the CD on the computer I had "saved" it on! Fortunately I'd put some chapters on the old-fashioned 3.5 disks -- remember them? We had to purchase an
external disk drive, as most PCs don't even have slots for floppies any more.

Anyway, good luck -- I hope you're able to retrieve at least some of the material somehow.