You do make back up copies of your work, don't you?

Computers are annoying in that 99.99% of the time they work perfectly.

But the 0.01% of the time that they don't, the consequences can be quite traumatic.

So, we authors are in the habit of making copies of our work in progress, and storing it safe from the electronic mayhem of a crashed hard drive, or other total system failure.

My machine crashed recently - in a way that took away all the data files held within its memory banks.

And it now seems that the last time I backed up my data was many months ago - which means I have lost all my current work in progress.    All of it.   (That rhythmic sound of a distant thumping is my head hitting the wall in a vain attempt to ease the pain).

At least, if my gentle prod makes you remember to back up your stuff today, then some good might come out of this personal disaster...