Craig told me that he thought he might be able to pull the files off of my crashed laptop a few months back and I've been meaning to get it to him ever since but it never happened. Until yesterday.

Well, he was successful and managed to back-up all of my files to my external hard-drive. What this means is: I've got my novel back. Before the crash, I was around 300 pages into writing "Hero's Quest." After the crash, I discovered that I hadn't backed it up since page 202. Naturally, I was devastated as while HQ was something that I primarily began writing in 2008, the idea for it had been gestating for a good fifteen years or longer. To make matters worse, the 100 pages that I'd believed were lost were the most emotionally laden pages in the storyline. The thought of having to redevelop that turned me off of the project for a time. I was never planning on abandoning the novel, but I needed space to regain the emotional stamina required to rewrite some of that stuff. And I wasn't looking forward to it. Craig had given me optimism when he said he thought he might be able to retrieve it, but if he hadn't been able to, I was prepared to start over in the near future.

Luckily, now I don't have to. I can finish off the last three and a half chapters as planned. I'm greatly excited to start up again and to get the first draft finished. Then, I've got to analyze it. Then, revise it. Then analyze. Then revise. And so forth and so on.

Anyhoo...This has been at the forefront of my mind today.