Wednesday, August 2, 2023

Backups and brainstorming by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 



Okay, in my last post, I mentioned that I’d lost a scene I know I wrote. Well, I mentioned it to Konnie, and she asked if I’d checked our shared files. I said I had, but also mentioned that I know I wrote it and shared it with her because she had once commented on the bit about my main female character sitting on the shoulders of the main male character. 

Konnie asked me how long ago I shared it with her, but I couldn’t remember. I did however remember that I shared it via email because it was before we acquired the ability to share our changes automatically through a program she is paying for. 

So, Konnie searched through her old emails! And I have my scene restored! Not only that, but it has changes in it I’d forgotten about, so now I’m working to combine the best parts of the previous version and the current version. 

This isn’t as easy as it seems because the current version has several significant changes in it, including the names of half the men in the story which needs to be dealt with. 

And then when I am rereading the old version, I noticed I had a feature in there that I hadn’t carried over to the current version that was excellent, and I had to rework the feature of the hero’s ship into the current version and work in a short bit of scene into the current version, which required changes because it's happening at a different time than I originally had it.  

Of course, that different time is the big issue because between writing the previous version and the current version, I decided some of the things they do need to take days longer than what I had. Ergo, that excellent interaction between the hero and heroine takes place days after I originally had it happen. 

And that will continue to be an issue, as well as the fact that I added details that weren’t in the previous version. And all of that makes a difference. 

The best part is I was afraid to scan ahead in the current version to see if I lost another fantastic scene that happens later in the story. And frankly, I still haven’t checked, but in rereading the obsolete version, I found I still had that scene as well. 

This is such great news. I can’t tell you how glad I am that Konnie is my backup. But now we have to be sure we are always saving the newest version! Or well lose our changes. 

Just remember when Word tells you, you already have a file by that name, please remember to save the current version, not the older one! Then you won’t have this issue. 

I might add, Konnie and I have used each other as backup before. Once I had to send Konnie all her stories that I had stored on my flash drive because her computer or her flash drive crashed. And this isn’t the first time she happened to have the version of a story that I managed to lose somehow.

Do any of you have a friend or family member you can share your work with, so you have it stored somewhere else? 

For that matter, do any of you have a family member with which you can brainstorm?

Not too long ago, Konnie called me because she was editing her sci-fi and she realized she needed one character to have a first name, not just a title and last name. And she’d already exhausted her list of alien names. 

Hence the reason she called me. 

Yeah, my strong suits are male POVs and alien names even though most of what I write is contemporary romance.  

The thing is Konnie’s strong suits are meek and timid female characters and making up titles. She’s even better at blurbs than I am. 

I do have a couple of female characters with phobias, and Konnie had to help me get those scenes right in the way I help her with male POVs. 

On the other hand, my best blurbs are in reality her work, and most of my titles are her work as well. I have one where the title for my story came from a friend, but the story idea was his too, he just insisted I was better suited to write it. And I have another one that the title came to me along with the main character. 

As much as we work together and complement each other, it's no wonder people have wondered why we don’t collaborate on a story.

All I can say is we work better alone, except when we need help. 

Anyway, happy writing everyone!

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