There is a certain sequence of keystrokes on my IPAQ that inexplicably and irrevocably deletes whatever Pocket Word file is open at the time. Why such a feature should exist is quite beyond me, but this is the second time in the past few weeks that I've accidentally tapped in what I'm now lovingly referring to as the "self-destruct sequence". The first time it happened I had just saved the file to the storage card, so no harm was done; last night, however, I managed to wipe out about 1500 words I had written during the subway and train ride home. Arg! In fact the damage would have been even worse if not for the fact that I'm now backing up the IPAQ on my desktop every evening, so I was at least able to restore what I'd written the day before and avoid losing another thousand words or two.
Fortunately what I'd written last night was more or less crap, so I'm not bemoaning its loss as much as I did the 8000 words that went poof late last Fall. In fact by being forced to re-write yesterday's work I think I found a much better tack to take through a section that was beginning to meander a bit. It now remains to be seen whether I'll hit the magical 100k mark on the commute home this evening as I was originally hoping, but even if I don't I may stay up late and hunt and peck my way to the milestone tonight anyway. 100,000 words! I was looking at the backup copy of the file on the desktop - with a 12 pt. font and double spacing the novel is about 340 pages long now. To think I'd ever get this far is still something I have a hard time believing...
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