Don't You Hate it When…

You spend a couple days outlining the plot for a novel, in addition to creating some character sketches. You come up with a few character names and you write a portion of the first scene. You put away the project because something more important came along.

Then, years later, you search for the file.

You look everywhere—on your computer, on your backup hard drive, on your backup CDs. You check your file cabinets, in case you printed it out, and you go through old notebooks (just in case...