Today I had a writing date out at Mary Anne Mohanraj’s and took the train out. It’s a nice ride and I can usually get some good work done. I got around 800 words done on the train, tossed my computer back in my bag and walked up to her house, plotting what I was going to write next.
Then I noticed that my bag seemed a little damp.
That would be because my water bottle came open and flooded the interior of the bag, which I’ve learned is water resistant because very little of it spilled out of the bag. My laptop, which had been on when this happened, but sleeping, was firmly off when I got to Mary Anne’s. I pulled the battery out, took the case asoff and lifted the keyboard clear trying to get as much water out as possible. It was drier than I thought inside, so we tried a hairdryer on it for about twenty minutes.
I know the rice trick, thank you, but had hopes that it might turn back on. Alas, those hopes were in vain. I’m now using a ASUS Transformer Prime wile I wait to see if a night spent in a bag of rice will do anything for the computer. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to get the fiction off the harddrive at the bare minimum, and that whatever is fried might be repairable. If it’s not… then I’ll shop for a new machine.
Meanwhile, I’ve got my outline and am just going on to the next chapter in the novel AND I’m looking for someone who has scrivener for Windows that cantry to compile a copy of the novel so I have something I can open on an Android machine.
EDITED TO ADD: A hearty thank you to Joseph Zieja who got my file opened, compiled and back to me in record time. I have my novel again and appear to have only lost the words that I did on the train this morning. I feel SO much better.
I have Scrivener for windows, (and absolutely no connections to foreign governments that might want to infringe on your copyrights.)
You are a gem. I’ll drop you an email in a few moments. Thank you.
Oh, now I understand the one tweet I saw earlier.
Oh no. I’m sorry. Here’s hoping some data is salvageable. Having lost a piece of expensive technology recently, I can sympathize.
If you just need someone to import and export in .rtf, I think any scrivener user (Mac or PC) can do that – but I’m not 100% sure. I’m willing to try on the Mac end, though.
=(
Sorry to hear about your computer.
I’m terrified of data loss. I have lost several years worth of pictures and videos, mostly of our two kids. I’m also abysmal about maintaining backup software or whatnot.
My solution was to work out of my dropbox folder. I’m not sure it’s the best solution. But for me, it lets me access my writing from anywhere (I proofread on my phone when I can’t have my laptop with me to write), I can share files out to my beta readers, and it’s safer than it would be on my hard drive alone.
I know that doesn’t help with the recovery of your computer or lost work. Maybe it will be helpful in the future.
I use dropbox, and that’s why I have backups of the novel but… my backup computer is running Android and Scrivener, the program that I write in, is a Windows program. So, I have a copy, I just can’t open it.
Fortunately, Joe has just offered to export it into a .doc for me.
Don’t despair yet. I dumped a full glass of water on my MacBook pro about a year ago. It turned itself off like yours. It would not turn back on initially but left it alone for 48 hours and it started right up. I’m still using it a year later, no lost data and no obvious damage.
I will cross my fingers that this works here as well.
Mary,
FYI, Scrivener actually has your text in RTF files inside the Scrivener folder. Not that a conversion route is a problem, but even if you could never again access Scrivener, you should have access to your text. As an example of one of my projects: My DocumentsScrivenerNetherwood.scrivFilesDocs In that last folder, “Docs” are a whole bunch of ##.rtf files. I’m not sure how it arranges them numerically, if it’s in order of creation or order of text as it appears in the doc, etc. But each one of those files there (replace Netherwood.scriv with the name of your project file) should be your working text.