Can't connect to local DB Engine?!?

I'm new to the world of SQL-- I've worked with it in the past, but now am the only one in my organisation that knows anything about it. I've started to look into migrating our old DBs (Access) to SQL and have played around with a local DB engine on my PC. Yesterday it worked great.

This morning I started up SSMS and am receiving the error "Cannot connect to [my pc name]"
"A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (.Net SqlClient Data Provider)"

Now, this is meant to be a local database so there's no reason for a network issue. On the dropdown for Server Name if I click <> the proper DB engine with my PC name clearly appears, but still does not connect. Can anyone suggest how I could go about reconnecting to the DB, as I did a ton of work on it yesterday creating views and procedures (kept the sql that created the views and procedures so that's not the end of the world, this is just frustrating).

Thanks

The term LocalDB in SQL Server parlance refers to a specific kind of DB used for development purposes. See here. I am guessing that you are not referring to that, instead to an instance of SQL Server you have installed on your local machine.

Assuming that that is the case, see if the SQL Server service is running. You can do this by running SQL Server Configuration Manager from the SQL Server program group and looking under the SQL Server Services group.