Well, I began Day 1 of NaNo 2016 quite on the ball. I had my outline done–first time ever, and I’ve been doing this 
since 2010. I had a Google doc ready to go. I told the fam that after I finished work, I would start writing until suppertime (thank you, thank you, husband who did the cooking) and after eating, I was going right back to writing until I hit 2000 words. I didn’t want a repeat of last year, when I didn’t even start writing until, like, Day 5.
(Last year I was ambivalent)
Anyway, I was at about 2000 words (I had just checked my word count-yay!) when I noticed something odd happening with my mouse, and the document scrolling rapidly upward. I stopped it, but didn’t think much of it, until I went back to the document to continue writing…and it was almost GONE. I only had about 700 words left.
HEART. STOPPING. MOMENT.
And on Day 1!
It’s important to say here that I am working in Google Docs because it supposedly saves your work every 5 seconds, so you don’t have to worry about losing it if your computer dies, or if other acts of God occur…well, I am here to say that there is a ghost in that machine.
Anyway, all was not lost. After frantically trying Control +Z over and over to no avail, I did what all self-respecting computer users do as a last resort: I googled: how to recover lost work in Google Docs.
There was one lonely comment in that thread: File/See revision history
So I tried it.
And it worked. Sort of. I got back about 1500 words. Still lost a lot, but not everything.
Onward. It can only get better from here, right?
PS: Now I am backing up frequently in Word, too.
Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker 