I Lost All My Old Stories: How Losing Them Helped Me Grow

Imagine putting so much time and work into all of your stories, only to lose them forever.

I didn't have to imagine that.

One Corrupted File. Then Another.

One day, I decided to gather every script that I'd ever written and add it to my portfolio. Additionally, I thought that it would be fun to read my old stories. I was eager to see how my writing had developed throughout the years. Did I change the way I formatted my scripts? Did my style completely change? It would've been great to analyse and review these stories, but I didn't get the chance to.

I found my folder of saved scripts and clicked on the first one. A pop-up appeared on my computer telling me that the file was corrupted. That isn't ideal, but it's just one script, I thought. Then I clicked on the next one, only to be greeted by the same pop-up. Two PDF's have been corrupted? That's odd.

I moved to the next file and got the same message. Then the next...

Nearly ALL of the files were corrupted!

I could hardly open any of my old stories from when I attended both of my universities. Luckily, a few were salvageable. However, I couldn't even open most of the scripts to preview them. Then I remembered that I'd made copies of the scripts on a USB stick! Phew, I could finally recover all of the scripts.

But...the USB stick was also corrupted.

Fortunately, I found some of the stories saved in different places, from email attachments to a few saved on my Google Drive. However, other scripts proved impossible to recover. I remember downloading numerous PDF recovery programs out of sheer panic to retrieve the stories. It was no use. I had to accept that I wasn't going to be able to read or share those projects again.

The stories I couldn't get back

At first, I was understandably devastated. Losing evidence of my previous creative work meant that I essentially had to rebuild my portfolio with limited scripts. The stories that I was left with were not a true reflection of my journey as a writer throughout the years. On a more personal level, each of these scripts represented a different part of my life.

Writing wasn't just something that I happened to be studying at the time. It had helped me through periods of depression and anxiety. It gave me somewhere to put my thoughts, experiences, and emotions that I didn't always know how to verbally express.

One of the stories that I had lost was the first script I ever wrote at university. It was based on a true story about something frightening that happened to me and somebody who used to be part of my life. I remember staying up late the night before I shared it with everyone in my writing workshop. I was determined to make it perfect.

I remember being told to write about something that scares me. So, that's what I did. I took something that had genuinely scared me and turned it into a story. Thankfully, the script was well received.

Another script I was attached to was called Timeless (2021). The title feels a little ironic now, considering the script itself has been lost. I'd never been a huge fan of the 'soulmate' trope in fanfiction, so I decided to put my own spin on the idea. I created a timer system, called Tempus, which counted down until a person met their soulmate. However, I focused on promoting the idea that self-love and romantic love can co-exist. It is fun to be in a romantic relationship, but you don't have to sacrifice yourself along the way.

Learning to let the stories go

The scripts may be physically gone, but the experience of writing them isn't. I still learned a lot from writing the stories. I learned what worked, what didn't, how to structure stories, develop characters, and deal with criticism. More importantly, I realised I could turn my experiences and imagination into something other people could read and connect with.

I also understood that not everything needs to 'survive' forever for it to be worthwhile. Those stories served a purpose when I wrote them. They helped me grow as a writer and allowed me to experiment with different narratives and characters. Losing them doesn't necessarily erase any of my growth.

Rather than reminiscing about filling the gaps in my portfolio with stories from the past, I decided to create new stories that represented who I am now. I became more determined than ever to write as many stories and articles as possible. Why spend so much time worrying about stories I've lost when there are so many I haven't written yet?

I can't go back in time and recover those scripts, but I can keep creating new ones. Hopefully, years from now, I'll be able to look back at the work I'm writing today and realise just how far I've come.

Back up your work. Seriously.

If there's one thing I've learned from this whole experience, it's that you should back up your work. Not just once, not even twice, but as many times as you possibly can.

I thought that keeping copies of my stories on my computer and on a USB stick was enough. Clearly, it wasn't.

Saving your work in multiple places is something I take much more seriously now. If a story is important to me, I don't want to have only one or two copies of it. Losing those scripts taught me that the hard way.

If you're someone who creates digital work, please don't make the same mistake I did. Back up your work somewhere other than on your desktop and a USB stick. Save it in as many places as possible. You never know how much you'll value something until you suddenly can't access it anymore.

And yes, I am considerably more suspicious of USB sticks now.

Moving forward

That was the strange thing about losing my old writing. I lost evidence of the stories, but I didn't lose everything I learned from writing them. In some ways, losing them may even have been a blessing. That sounds crazy to say, but I wrote many of those scripts while I was at university, during a very difficult period of my life. When I look back now, I feel like a completely different person.

Losing those old stories gave me a unique kind of freedom. Yes, it meant losing a record of who I was. However, it also freed me from being tied to that version of myself. Instead of trying to recover what I had written, it pushed me to create again.