There I was, working on my third semester critical essay. Click, save. Break time.

My daughter’s Girl Scout troop was coming over for a Pizza/Wii party as a ‘thank you’ to providing a formidable discussion on female protagonists as role models. I wanted to order the pizza online to get a special “online” discount. Little did I know…

I clicked on the Papa John’s pizza link. The page popped up, but suddenly closed down explorer. Weird. I tried it again, even clicked on the pizza that I wanted to order, again explorer shut down. My desktop icons were gone and a “Smart” something box jumped on the screen like it was checking for viruses. I cancelled it and ran my own anti-virus program. TOO LATE.

My entire desktop was wiped clean, itunes, pictures, documents, EVERYTHING. I couldn’t panic…I was too overwhelmed with life to panic.

“You need to get an external hard drive, costs about $100 bucks,” said my best friend. Yeah, thanks. Will do.

That my friend is a tragic experience for anyone, especially for us writers who have at least 100 first-second-third drafts of one story, exercises, old essays and creative work from eons ago. Save your sanity and invest in an external hard drive.