I spent Saturday morning at a coffee shop pounding away at my novel. It's what dutiful writers do. Besides, they have some sweet doughnuts on Saturday mornings that are a-freaking-mazing.

So I'm typing along, la-de-da-de-dah, when blink, blink. Every word in my entire 97,000 word document turns into asterisks, like this: ************************* The whole manuscript. Every word. Not. Even. Kidding.

Let me tell you, that was some panic attack, especially when I found out that there's nothing you can do to recover any of it. Turns out there's a Word 2011 bug, and if you haven't updated in awhile, it can happen to you too. Once it hits, the document it attacks is completely unrecoverable. You can read more about it HERE.

The cure is prevention, and that's what today's post is about. So, attention all you Mac owners that use Word . . . UPDATE YOUR SOFTWARE! This bug was fixed in the 14.1.2 update. Once you've updated, you don't have to worry about seeing those nasty asterisks filling your screen.

Fortunately, I had my document saved on another computer at home so all I lost was what I'd written that day. Still, 1,000 words is nothing to sneeze at . . . but it's also nothing to hyperventilate over, either. Word to the wise: take time to save your work. Back-ups are gold. Yes, Jesus saves. You should too.