I tried to update my iPhone 5 and now its in recovery mode?

So i tried to update my iPhone 5 from the old version to the IOS 7 and for awhile it was updating and now on iTunes it says it has an error and can't update the phone so i unplugged my phone and it right away said to plug it back into iTunes and once i did it says iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode and now says i have to restore my phone to use on iTunes and i haven't backed up my phone in awhile and i'm afraid once i do i will lose a lot of important stuff and i don't know what to do because my phone just won't work, tried turning it off and the screen goes black then says to plug into iTunes…

Proper procedure is to do the restore.