Disaster Turned Blessing

By Courtney Pierce

A bountiful and delicious Thanksgiving ushered in a promising Christmas season. Let the games begin! Lights, wreaths, decorating, and a daily dose of Christmas movies.

My husband, stepdaughter, and I gladly handed over the $5.00 permit fee to cut our wild Christmas tree on Montana state land. Deal of the century. There’s a lot of shopping acreage here in the Kalispell area, so we bundled up for the hunt under a gentle mountain snowfall. The tree we found wasn’t all perfect by retail standards, but that’s what gave it infinite appeal. We even snagged a small one for my stepdaughter’s bedroom. No worries about having enough decorations. Collectively, my husband and I have an ornament count that spans over forty Christmas seasons. I guess that amounts to eighty Christmases worth of decorations. We selected the best of the best, and we still had an embarrassing excess.

Over the holiday, I had planned to make huge progress on my next book, BIG SKY TALK. I was nine chapters in and excited to pick up where I left off.

Then disaster struck. 

The hard drive in my mere seven-month-old laptop crashed with a bang. I couldn’t access any of my files, including the first nine chapters of my book-in-progress, never mind the manuscripts of my previous six books.

I got a windburn zooming to my local computer to a repair shop. Two days later, the news made my stomach drop to subzero. I needed a new hard drive, and nothing on it could be saved. The squeaky-clean new drive held none of my files. However, the tech gave me back my dead one with a glimmer of hope. He suggested that I contact a specialty data recovery company with more sophisticated equipment to attempt to find my files. Luckily, there was a reputable one in Missoula.

I know, I know. I can hear your voices chastising me for not backing up my files and documents for the last six months. I never had a problem before, so I had become complacent. Shame on me. And shame on Scrivener, my writing program, for switching from storing the proprietary files in the cloud to saving them on my hard drive. The company never informed me about the change in their process.

I should’ve figured that computers aren’t the work horses they used to be. They’ve gone the way of televisions and cell phones. Count on them lasting about a year ̶ or seven months in my case ̶ with more plastic parts to lower the price tag.

After a promising discussion of my situation with the data recovery company, I mailed off my blown hard drive and crossed my fingers. I resigned myself to the real possibility that I would need to start over with my novel. After all, my head held the story. No one could take that away from me.

Then something started to happen: I actually got excited about re-writing those first nine chapters. It was a chance to start fresh. In a quandary, I had written three different opening chapters and couldn’t decide which one worked best. I had nothing to lose by shaking out the Etch-A-Sketch.

Some writing coaches recommend chucking your first drafts in order to breathe new life into a blank page. And as painful as it can be, Stephen King recommends we should “kill our darlings.” First drafts are an indulgence of the author; second and third ones are for the readers.

Maybe there was a higher purpose for my data woes. But all those hours. All those outlines. And all those imaginative brain cells I had killed off. Was I being lazy? Was I trying to be a speed demon to make my own fake deadline? Possibly.

I sucked it up and started my book over while I waited to hear the verdict from the tech pros. The longer the silence loomed, the faster I wrote, convinced those draft chapters were lost. In the new ones, I incorporated more detail, evened out the flow, and cut what I thought was superfluous. The characters started to bloom with personality. My brain fired on all pistons with the freshness of it all. It was like going into a new job with oodles of direct experience. I made better decisions. I dug in with instinct, not superficial details. I let the characters lead me to bring them to life. All five senses came alive with vivid imagery. I didn't have to monitor the small stuff: the color of the protagonist's eyes, what kind of car she drove, or the style of her clothes. I was now creating living, breathing people.

As I dove into the new Chapter Four, my cell phone rang. The data recovery company calling, just like Avon.

“Good news, Courtney! Your data is 98% there,” the Tech said. "But it's going to take us about a week to extract it." 

“That’s great,” I said. "I hope my new manuscript isn't part of the 2% of roadkill. Is this going to cost me my first born child that I can't have at sixty?"

He laughed out loud. "This is a Level 2, so it'll be about $700."

Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled to get back my files, but my writing bubble deflated a bit, and not just about the price. The original drafts of those nine chapters sent my mind into a scramble. Sorting out all of the versions would be like re-installing the old toilet in a newly remodeled bathroom.

When I downloaded my Scrivner files, I created a new folder for those old chapters, but I don't think I'll open it. I'll keep going with the new version. That folder will only be a crutch in the event I get stuck.

And in the meantime, I'll enjoy the holiday with my original plan to spend the time with my family, go out for a snowshoe hike, target shoot to practice for next hunting season, and move forward writing BIG SKY TALK.

And I promise to back up my work at least once a week. The mega-capacity thumb drive I purchased should do the trick, along with the additional external hard drive my husband gave me. I’m also going to email myself the most important files as back-up to the back-up to back-up.

Happy Holidays to you all! Stay safe and warm, and I'll catch up with you in the New Year.

Photo: Micah Brooks

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell, Montana with her husband, stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat, Princeton. Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. She spent 28 years as an executive in the entertainment industry and used her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. She studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, Courtney is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and She Writes. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

Print and E-books are available through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com.

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com 

Audiobook now Available!

Available Now!
Book 3 of the
Dushane Sisters
Trilogy

Audio book coming soon!

New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."

Coming in 2020!

When Aubrey Cenderon moves to Montana after the death of her father, the peace and quiet of Big Sky Country becomes complicated with a knock on the door from the sheriff. An injured grizzly bear is on the loose and must be eliminated before it kills again. The sheriff's insistence that she buy a gun for protection will present Aubrey with some serious soul-searching, because the grizzly-on-the-run is hunting for her too . . . for a different reason.