I know what you’re thinking. You’re sitting there, shaking your head, saying to yourself, “Oh no. I know where that blog title came from. Poor Kaz had a run-in with her machine and something got deleted and she didn’t have a backup. Oh dear. I wonder how much she lost? I wonder how long it will take to recover?”

That’s what you thought, wasn’t it? Go on, be honest. Well, you’re not quite right. Actually, you’re completely wrong and I have the exact opposite problem. You see, dear readers, I have kept too many backups. Let me explain.

I have what I think is a great, solid science-fiction romance called War Games (WG). It actually grew from something I read on the Smart Bitches site early last year; to whit, while there are a lot of gay romances around, where are the lesbian ones? Click here for the link. In the Comments, I said I’d take up the challenge (on behalf of the more mainstream romance community … I’m not here to say there isn’t great lesbian s-f around … look at Ursula K leGuin and Joanna Russ, for example) and write a lesbian space opera novella and submit it to a publisher by the end of 2007. And Keziah Hill said she’d remind me. Well that didn’t happen (the finishing and submitting thing … and the reminding thing, come to think about it) but, in my defence, the story just kept growing until it’s now a full-sized novel (er, kinda sorta 80+K words, for reasons that will become obvious anon).

So, here I am in February 2008, editing WG (as I do with anything that hasn’t sold yet) and, as I get to the end of my first recent round of edits, I get the feeling that I’ve expanded on some of the stuff before. And where is that passage I’m sure I wrote? And didn’t I include more description for this bit here? I mean, my memory is a bit flaky at times, but I don’t often forget pivotal scenes I’ve written for a current wip. So, riven by frustration, I started trawling back through my backups. Well, in an effort to be as paranoid about my work as possible, I put backups everywhere — on my two machines, on my thumbdrive, on my SD card, squirrelled with my ebook library (another SD card), on the home network drive, on a bigger external portable drive. Geez, it seemed the only place I hadn’t put it was on J’s work computer! And, to complicate matters, there were multiple backups at each location! So guess what? I had to go through all those backup directories, opening up each incarnation of WG, and checking a particular part of the manuscript for a scene I know I wrote, but couldn’t quite remember when. That has taken me a week.

And I found it. The problem is, it’s not the version I’ve just spent several weeks editing. So now I have two versions of WG, each edited to approximately the same level, but each of them subtly different. Added to that is the added frustration of having the formatting of one all over the place because I migrated from Microsoft Word to OpenOffice Writer late last year and, despite editing, the version I opened still had wonky fonts all over the place. (Word must put some sticky bits in the document that can’t be removed by just changing the style, which is what I did the first time around.) I think I had to cut out and retype the offending text in full before the wonkiness disappeared in my ‘other’ version of WG; it’s damned annoying. Which wouldn’t be so bad except the wonkiness throws the pages out of alignment. Oh no, no quick scan between versions, comparing rough positions of paragraphs against each other. With the formatting gone up the wazoo, it’s got to be a line-by-line exercise. Why don’t I adjust the formatting? Because that, unfortunately, would be a line-by-line exercise as well and on an older edited version to boot.

Look, I know I shouldn’t be complaining. I looked for a backup file and I found it. It could have been worse. I could have lost those extra 10,000 words and been desolate for weeks. But I’m just so frustrated at having to merge two manuscripts. Aw, what the heck. Who am I kidding? Underneath that irritation, I’m really pleased as punch. Ask any writer, and she’ll tell you that finding 10,000 extra words of usable work is like finding gold. Better, ‘cos you can start using it straight away. Just a word of advice to other paranoid writers, however — it may be best to perhaps restrict your backup options to only three devices and to use a grandfathering technique of versions rather than keeping the entire damn Genesis “and Abraham beget Isaac, and Isaac beget …” line of snapshot directories in each place. (I had up to 17! writing directories! in each! location! Yikes!)

FURTHER THOUGHTS: Just ask me; I’ll write the most UNpopular romances ever. Ellora’s Cave doesn’t accept f/f anymore? No problems, Kaz will write it anyway. Readers say m/m really floats their boat but f/f is meh? Again, no problem, Kaz will write one anyway. Brain like mush much? On the flip side, I think I have a good story in WG. And I think I’ve done a fair job of eliciting sympathy for Cheloi and Garza and the difficulties of their romance, regardless of the fact that they just happen to be two women. I just hope I eventually find a publisher who thinks so too. Wish me luck.