Photo by Ato Aikins on Unsplash
At least, that's what I thought.
For more than a year, I had been piecing together a book. I had collected quotes from books I was reading, sections from sermons I had preached, and stories about people who had inspired me. Slowly, the pieces were beginning to form something I cared about.
The title was going to be Believe Well, Live Well: The Essential Faithful Life.
The premise was simple: learning to believe what is true is essential to learning to live faithfully. What we believe about God, ourselves, other people, suffering, truth, and the future inevitably shapes the way we live.
Then our organization changed servers.
An IT technician was assigned to transfer the files of our staff, including mine. The process was completed, and I thought nothing more about it.
Until a few weeks later. I went looking for the file containing my book.
It wasn't there.
I searched again.
Nothing.
I searched all my files by the title.
Zero files found.
The technician did his own search.
Same result.
I felt sick.
Eventually, we discovered that a segment of my files had never transferred.
The technician was as mystified as I was. "This doesn't make sense. I don't know what happened to your files."
The files were gone.
So was a year of work.
This happened more than thirty years ago,
but I can still remember the feeling of despair. My colleagues encouraged me to reconstruct the manuscript from memory, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I didn't have the heart for it.
I couldn't get my head around trying to recreate something that had taken me more than a year to assemble. I wanted the manuscript back. And when I couldn't have it back, I gradually convinced myself that perhaps it didn't matter.
My own worst enemy of an inner voice began whispering:
The book probably wouldn't have been very good anyway. Maybe it's just as well the file disappeared.
And my busy schedule provided a convenient excuse to move on.
Looking back, there is an irony I completely missed at the time.
The book was called Believe Well, Live Well. And I certainly wasn't believing well.
The writing prompt for this month brought that memory back to me:
"Share a story of when you found it difficult to give
thanks in your writing life. What did God teach you
through that experience?"
I wasn't thankful thirty years ago. And, honestly, I'm not particularly thankful for losing the manuscript today. But I am thankful for this writers' group.
I'm thankful for a writing prompt that reached back three decades and pulled an unfinished story back into the light.
And perhaps I'm beginning to understand what God might have been teaching me.
I still believe the premise of that long-lost book:
Believing well doesn't mean believing that everything
will go well. It means believing what is true
even when things don't go well.
Maybe the book wasn't lost after all.
Maybe only the first draft was.
Have you ever lost a manuscript? A file? Or simply the motivation to continue something you once believed was worth doing?
Maybe it's time to begin again.
Bob, just reading your post today I felt the shock of that loss in my gut. Although I never lost a manuscript, I do remember years ago trying to access my blog one day, only to find it missing. Talk about a shock to the system. For whatever reason, Blogger had it taken down. I contacted them - it took several 'panicky' days before they sorted it on their end. And then it was back online. That's when I realized I needed to back up my online materials, even my blogs.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for sharing your experience. Perhaps you have had to live that well-lived life a while longer before you could properly write about it? Of course it would be a brand new book at this stage of life, even if the premise and title were the same. Blessings on whatever you decide is the right thing to do moving forward.
Thank you Brenda for sharing your experience. We are shock buddies. And for the encouragement of taking another run at writing that book.
DeleteWow. What a shock you must have experienced! The gasp and ‘oh no’ that came from my mouth was real as I read your post. But like you say, maybe it was a first draft and if it is a worthwhile project the Lord will inspire you and light the fire once more. Also a good reminder for us all to back up our work. We’re becoming increasingly trusting of technology and recovery these days. Thanks for an eye opening and ‘heart in my throat’ post, Bob.
ReplyDeleteIt was a gut punch. And yes, I have backed up my work now. Those were pre-Cloud days. (And I'm not sure I am absolutely confident in the Cloud."
DeleteThank you for sharing your experience with your lost manuscript, Bob. Wow, a real heart pounder. As I read through your words here is a thought that came to me. Bob, you are the premise of your "lost" manuscript. You have been living out the premise of your book thirty years later, and we have found it in you. Keep writing, brother! Blessings to you and dear wife!
ReplyDeleteSo good, Alan. "found it in you." Thank you. And I'm glad to see you populating Substack!
DeleteThank you for sharing this, Bob. I once lost several chapters of a book I was working on, and even that was enough to make me give up on it at the time. I still had the opening chapters, though, and about fifteen years later I came across them again and thought, maybe one day I’ll return to it. Your post really encouraged me. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI today is you "one day." If the post was a spark to get you started again, I'd love to know that and to learn about the publication date for your book so I can purchase a copy.
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