Near Death

Okay, it wasn't really that bad, but...somebody asked me how many words on the WWII story I had in the can.  I decided I would print out all the various disconnected scenes along with the six chapters that are actually the beginning of the story and count the words.  Easy, right?

So, I went looking for the scenes and found three pivotal scenes, nearly whole chapters, missing.  They were just not where I thought I put them.  I could remember what happened but not how, the words were not there for me to recapture, but the ideas were.  I panicked.  I looked through my WORD files.  Nada.  Karyn found something by typing in key words in that little file folder thing on the bottom of the page here for which I was grateful, but I distinctly remembered these two missing scenes that I knew I had written and were apparently gone forever.

I tried her trick, putting several words that were distinct to these passages into the little space atop the folder looking thing on the bottom of the screen.  Nothing happened. 
I went through 819 SENT emails because I knew I had written these passages recently enough and was negligent on deleting sent stuff.  Nope.  Not there. 

I wrote to the very friends I sent these sections to, hoping beyond hope that they had somehow saved these bits.  Nope, though they remembered what I had written.

I read through those SENT folders again. 

I prayed.

I checked my husband's WORD file on his laptop...success!  I found one thing I had written last summer and neglected to put into My WORD file.  That was good, but still, there were two whole big scenes missing.  Memorable, but not word for word repeatable.

Last resort, today, I started looking through my entire documents file.  I found two files with BACKUPWIDOWSWALK on them...surely something I had transferred to gmail then into my files somewhere.
I opened the first and there was the first segment I was looking for.
Opened the second and, bingo!  The last missing piece was in there.

So, I am printing out all the words I have written, wherever I may find them, just to see how many words I have regarding this lovely story.  My heart is happy.  Now I just have to highlight and print all I have. 
I can do that.