I'm ready to cry right now.

I don't know what happened, but half my finished novel from awhile back is gone. I finished the entire thing, I uploaded it to Dropbox daily, and now it's gone. Not on my computer, not on Dropbox.

I'm trying to remember what I could've done. I briefly remember using Kevin's laptop because mine was out of commission for awhile. Okay, so we checked his Dropbox in case it was saved there on accident. Nothing.

His laptop needs a new power cable so I can't check that, but I know I'd have backed it up somehow. I made sure to be so careful. I searched my computer for anything that could be related to it. Nothing. I searched my email, hoping I emailed it to myself in case I couldn't use Dropbox on Kevin's laptop. Nothing.

I had decided to publish it at last... I was going to sit down and start on my edits and I was so excited. I've been wanting to do this for awhile now, I just didn't have the time. But I'd finally decided to carve out 30 minutes a day to work on it since the story is fighting for attention in my head again.

I don't know what else to do. I don't know what happened. I won NaNo that year, I know I finished it. But where is it? My computer hasn't crashed (I don't even think it was out of commission for real, just minor issues), and I haven't done anything with it since I finished. I filed it away in Dropbox (or so I thought) and now... Well, now I only have half a novel. And I'm just sick thinking about all I might have lost.

And yet, I don't even know how I could have lost it, that's the worst part. I simply can't remember anything else I could have done.

ETA: I think I solved the mystery.... DropBox auto-synch may be to blame. It's very possible I lost all of it. If this is the case, I'll never use Dropbox to back up my files again. And a simple Google search proves that this is a possibility with them if you're not careful. Since the file on my computer may have been lost, Dropbox may have synched and lost it too. Which really defeats the purpose of "backing it up" don't you think?