Absolute Panic

Wow, okay, so I just spent about three hours writing up a timeline for one of the stories I’m working on. To put it simply, it was 9-point font and took up two entire pages. When I hit PRINT, a message popped up saying my printer was offline, so I turned it off and on again. While I waited for it to start up, I went ahead and clicked SAVE AS. The Save page came up but before I could do anything else, the scariest pop-up ever took over my screen:

Word has stopped working. Please wait while we try and fix the problem.

In just a few seconds it flashed from that to Resolving Issues and then Restarting Word. Then a blank Document 1 popped up. My timeline was gone. No auto-save data or anything. Three hours of work down the drain. I seriously wanted to cry.

But then, a few seconds later, the printer lit up and printed out a single copy of my timeline. I’ve never cried out of happiness before, but I sure have now! And I have learned my lesson – never ever rely on the auto-save feature.