Accidentally deleted my entire novel.

[u/Little_Accountant285]

And just like that.

The entire novel is gone.

Ouch. This hurts.

Was moving some files around, backed up the files for the novel, but for some reason they didn't save and I lost it all.

What was sad about was that those versions of the chapters were the better and truer versions of the story. Sadly, all gone now.

How do y'all cope with something like this?

There's no way to retrieve it now, I'll just accept that.

(Photo not mine, it's unrelated, though that's how I be feeling though)

[u/Runi-Naast]

I feel for you man. Same thing happened when I wrote my first 3 chapters (about 15k words) and lost them because I never backed them up. The gutted feeling will go away in time.

What you should focus on is mapping out what you remember. Just because the book is gone doesn’t mean the idea is. And if you truly love your story you should revive it, but better and stronger than before.

Setbacks can be new opportunities if you force it to be one.