Valuable Lesson Learned...

Don't forget to hit SAVE every once in a while!

That charming little autorecovery save feature in Microsoft Word is really nice, and it's saved my butt a couple of times when I've had my computer crash unexpectedly. I'm quite fond of it. But today after working hard on completing a tricky chapter and beginning the next one in a neat fashion, I walked away from my computer to talk to my husband. When I strolled back, I notice that my computer has in fact rebooted itself because of the ridiculous feature on Windows 7 that causes a computer to restart if 15 minutes have passed without the user to hit a Postpone button.

When Microsoft Word popped back up, my entire day of writing was gone. Auto save had apparently taken a hike while I'd been working today (which I know isn't technically true since the feature itself is enabled, it just didn't save anything. Techie hubby tried to figure it out to no avail). I ended up having to rewrite the scene to make sure I didn't completely forget what I wrote, but the damage has been done since I think what I rewrote is lackluster in comparison to what I initially had.

So don't let this happen to you... SAVE your work throughout the writing session.