More of a Nuisance Than a Disaster but It Feels Like a Disaster

I finished my novel six weeks ago. I printed a copy out. My wife read it for a final edit. I read along behind her, doing a final edit of my own on the same manuscript. I started incorporating the changes into the Word version. The edits were not extensive, and as I worked along, I naturally did some additional cutting, polishing and amending.

Yesterday, about 80 pages in to the edit, for the first time I tried to back up the Word document to a RW CD and somehow failed to manage that and somehow ended up with the working edit and with something called working editA on the computer desktop, both of which the computer had said moments before that it had tried to save but could not save. I tried to open the A document. It said click here to revert to original A.

I did. Both Word documents disappeared from the desktop simultaneously and have not been seen since. I've looked in the Norton recycle bin, in the temp file, in every file in the computer using the "search" function. Tomorrow, I'll ask a wise friend for advice, but it looks as if I've have to redo the first 80 pages.

Some of the little grace notes I added I'll not remember, though perhaps I'll think of other better ones. Nothing of real substance was loss. But....

Depressing.