Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad

I was so pleased when my 12 year old daughter decided to do her own NaNoWriMo. I'd never have thought of doing something like that at such a young age! And she was doing it well. Three days into it, she had over 5000 words written, which put her a little ahead of the pace. She's been ahead of me a lot of the time.

The first night, we backed both of our stories onto a flash drive... but neglected this minor detail the next two days. (Can you guess where this lovely story is going?)

Morning #4: her laptop is completely dead.

There's a little history here. First, you should know that she used three years of paper route savings to buy this laptop over the summer. Second, you should know that this is the fourth time it has died like this. They keep replacing the hard drive (taking weeks in the process), but clearly something else is causing this.

So, I'm MAD at myself for not backing her story up every day, and I'm MAD that this keeps happening, and I'm MAD that something she sacrificed so much to buy turned out to be such a lemon, and I'm MAD that her story is lost, and I'm MAD that even if it's recovered, it will miss the November NaNo window. I'm also really hoping that her wonderful talent and interest in writing isn't discouraged by this setback.

sniff.