My Dad Deleted My Novel
By: Ash
Tags: Technology, Creative Writing, Family, Writing Advice, Fathers

My Dad Deleted My Novel

A nostalgic and cautionary tale about backing up your work.

Photo by Fredy Jacob on Unsplash

I started writing a novel when I was thirteen. The year was 2001, and I diligently typed away on the beige family desktop each evening, headphones feeding me a constant stream of carefully curated midi files and Clippy insisting I was probably writing a letter and needed assistance. Floppies littered the desk and magnets were strictly banned from coming anywhere near this slovenly behemoth and its tangled nest of wires. I blocked any and all distractions with my cleverly worded AIM away message, one of several for every occasion.

(Also, if it sounded like that last paragraph was in another language, congrats on your functional joints. I’m jealous.)

An inspiring start

It was an epic fantasy about four magical girls that could transform into dragons. There was an anthropomorphic black cat that helped them, and an evil bad guy to be overthrown. There was lore, the genocide of the cat’s species, and bloodlines. Artifacts abound, and each girl had their own unique dragon form (including eastern-style dragons). It was my opus, my pride and joy, nestled in the confines of the C: drive.

My dad, meanwhile, was doggedly trying to switch from a lifetime of construction work to the blossoming world of IT. He always enthusiastically supported my creative endeavors, from music to art and everything and anything in between, but he also was keen for me to learn C++ alongside him (I did not). He was also a keen early adopter of whatever new technology we could afford (very little). So that meant he was confined to experimenting with the family desktop instead, teaching himself to program on it and learning how the hardware worked. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

A dream disappeared

Just like most evenings, I logged onto the desktop, ready to get through another chapter. But something was wrong. The midi files I had downloaded were gone. Still, that was just music. But the Word document was gone too. Cue my heart starting to pound. Months of work, MIA. I searched everywhere, checked the Recycle Bin, then double checked while forcing myself to take deep breaths.

When nothing turned up, I went to my dad, blinking back tears, and asked where he’d put my files. He seemed confused, and I explained that my novel was nowhere to be found. Confusion coupled with shock on his face; he didn’t know I was writing a novel. He then went on to explain, with guilt knitting his brow, that he reformatted the hard drive. Everything was gone.

We were both distraught, as he had not backed up anything of mine onto a floppy disk. I didn’t have notes on the story, I hadn’t sent it to anyone, had not printed it, or otherwise created any copies. It was around sixty percent finished, and now there was nothing left of it.

My dad, to his credit, apologized profusely. As I mentioned before, he had always supported my creative pursuits more than anyone, and deleting my novel had hit him hard. Hard enough, in fact, that shortly after, he got a new computer, and gave me the old family desktop. From that point on, I always had my own computer, and thus total control over my own data. Alas, I never wrote another word of that novel.

The lessons learned

While those magical girls and their trusty cat remain relegated to the fringes of my memory, I did learn a few lessons from this little disaster: