What’s my best piece of writing?
I lost it. In a computer. Into the ethers. And I don’t know why. But I am sure it was the best writing I ever did. But be assured, I am not the only writer who has experienced this.
I am a very fast (and sloppy) typist. I am also, shall we say, technologically challenged. Therefore, this morning, after working for say three hours, working well, writing the best piece of writing ever, it vanished. Gone. A screen as white as the snow outside my window. Except the snow has fox and squirrel foot prints. My screen has nothing. Not even fly specks!
I thought I had saved it, because I always save everything I write, except, because it was the best piece of writing I ever did, I had not.
A frantic call of help to my wife, my local, and quite competent (but sometime exasperated with me) IT person.
“What did you do?”
“I don’t know. It just vanished.”
“You must have done something.”
“I have no idea.”
Thirty minutes later there is a call to our professional IT person, who never seems to be exasperated, but then, he gets paid $125.00 per hour.
An hour later (you figure the cost) the verdict comes in. It is gone, that best piece of writing I have ever done.
I go to the most recently saved version of manuscript, and try to remember all the things I did.
But I can’t. Why?
Because what I lost was the best piece of writing I ever did.
Sound familiar? I’m guessing yes.
So, my professional advice: if you write the best writing you ever wrote, save it. But of course, if you did save it, it is NOT the best piece of writing you ever did.
Only when you lose it is it the best.
Are we all in agreement?
8 thoughts on “The best writing I’ve ever done”
Google docs might save you from this since it has auto save and allows you to revisit previous versions should the need arise. I’ m certain the gods of cyberspace will enjoy your best writing forever.
Like the fish that got away. I’ve had it happen too. One of the sorrows of the technological age.
This reminds me of the Garrison Keillor story about the manuscript he lost in a train station…or maybe it was an airport.
Absolutely in agreement that my finest writing is the writing that got away. My best dialog and turns of phrase always come to me in the shower and are gone by the time I’m dry. I wrote one wonderful novel about Isle Royale during the Great Depression that somehow didn’t make it from the old computer to the new one when everything else did. I am sure it was the one I’d have gotten a Newbery for.
Ernest Heminway lost a manuscript on a train ride in Europe. Does that help to soothe the wound?
A wife cannot compete with the beautiful ghost of the one that died… Rebecca, anyone?
Nicely put, Avi. And familiar, too. Except that at my house the first IT person is the husband, and, like your wife, the first diagnostic statement is the same, “you must have done something.”
Shared misery, is somehow misery softened. Just think; in that great either in the sky, all these masterpieces are floating about, being read (only) by angels.
Some of the best writing I ever did, is lost thanks to a computer being stolen. This was before the Great Internet Awakening and cloud storage, so only the thief may have read those documents.