Full Disk Recovery

I have my hard drive back. I have all my stories and bits of writing. I am so happy.

It did cross my mind that the hard drive was completely dead but time and money (thanks to very generous parents) have brought my stuff back. I now have two external hard drives and proper back ups.

I couldn't even begin to count the number of times I've read writers exhorting other writers to back everything up, usually because they've lost years worth of work themselves. I know, as a reasonably technology-literate, fully paid up member of the 21st century, that copies are vital. I've even watched the Blackadder 3 episode, Ink and Incapability, with horror, imagining what it would be like to write without a PC. Just imagine, if you had to start from scratch if your dictionary got burnt. The horror; the despair; the finger cramp.

And yet.... It remained an item on a to-do list. And if the hard drive hadn't died, it probably would still be an item on a to-do list.

I'm not pondering this because I want to celebrate the return of my stories or punish myself for procrastination. I'm doing it because it reveals to me something about how caution, or the lack of it, informs our behaviour and therefore that of our characters. In most cases our charaters will know what they should do but that doesn't mean they will do it.