Backing up my work
Shana recently had a blog topic question for me, and it's a great one for all you writers out there -- how do you back up your work?
For those of you who've written books, you know how you'd react if suddenly your one and only copy/source for your precioussss suddenly vanished into thin air. A couple years ago, I heard of a bestselling author who works on a typewriter and accidentally tossed his one and only copy of his latest manuscript on a freakin' bonfire (he was burning old office papers). I just shook my head in disbelief when I read that one. For the rest of us who use modern (but still failable) technology, for probably more than a few authors, it'd be good move on their family's part to put away the breakables, hide the knives, and get the hell out of the house. Writers are high-strung creatures; trust me, it's gonna get ugly.
This is why you back your work up six ways from Sunday.
Here's what I do, and from what I've heard and read, my precautions aren't obsessive in the least; in fact, they're rather tame.
I have two thumb drives: one lives in my cavernous pocketbook, the other in a drawer in my day-job office. That's the key to successful backup -- divide and conquer. DO NOT keep all of your backups in one place. So every night when I'm finished writing, I backup what I've done from my laptop to my thumb drive, then the next morning when I go to the day job, I back it up from one thumb drive to the other.
I also back up my work on a finished chapter basis to my husband's laptop. He keeps a folder on his desktop just for me.
And I'd been hearing for quite some time about authors emailing their work nightly to their gmail accounts. I now do that as well. Gmail is danged near limitless sizewise, it's free, and most importantly, it gets your work waaay offsite. So if (God forbid) there was a simultaneous fire at both my home and day-job office, I wouldn't be SOL (that's "Shit Out of Luck") for anyone who hasn't heard that one before.
So backup is good, backup is your friend, and backup can save not only your work but your sanity.
If you have a backup method that you use and I didn't cover here, please share it with the group. You might just help save a fellow author's work -- maybe even mine. ; )
Lisa
For those of you who've written books, you know how you'd react if suddenly your one and only copy/source for your precioussss suddenly vanished into thin air. A couple years ago, I heard of a bestselling author who works on a typewriter and accidentally tossed his one and only copy of his latest manuscript on a freakin' bonfire (he was burning old office papers). I just shook my head in disbelief when I read that one. For the rest of us who use modern (but still failable) technology, for probably more than a few authors, it'd be good move on their family's part to put away the breakables, hide the knives, and get the hell out of the house. Writers are high-strung creatures; trust me, it's gonna get ugly.
This is why you back your work up six ways from Sunday.
Here's what I do, and from what I've heard and read, my precautions aren't obsessive in the least; in fact, they're rather tame.
I have two thumb drives: one lives in my cavernous pocketbook, the other in a drawer in my day-job office. That's the key to successful backup -- divide and conquer. DO NOT keep all of your backups in one place. So every night when I'm finished writing, I backup what I've done from my laptop to my thumb drive, then the next morning when I go to the day job, I back it up from one thumb drive to the other.
I also back up my work on a finished chapter basis to my husband's laptop. He keeps a folder on his desktop just for me.
And I'd been hearing for quite some time about authors emailing their work nightly to their gmail accounts. I now do that as well. Gmail is danged near limitless sizewise, it's free, and most importantly, it gets your work waaay offsite. So if (God forbid) there was a simultaneous fire at both my home and day-job office, I wouldn't be SOL (that's "Shit Out of Luck") for anyone who hasn't heard that one before.
So backup is good, backup is your friend, and backup can save not only your work but your sanity.
If you have a backup method that you use and I didn't cover here, please share it with the group. You might just help save a fellow author's work -- maybe even mine. ; )
Lisa
posted by Lisa Shearin at
6:56 AM
14 Comments:
I back up on a thumb drive too, and then back up the back-up on my desktop computer (mostly I write on my laptop). Occasionally I'll burn everything onto a CD and stick it in my important papers file, the one I plan to grab (after my cats) if the house catches on fire or something awful like that.
One of my online writer friends recently lost a lot of his writing when his computer died. He's now in the process of rewriting from scratch or revising from old backed up versions. I do not want to have to do that, hoo boy!
I keep all my writing in a file folder that is right off of C:. It is not in the My Documents folder, since that folder is a target for viruses. Yes, I have to navigate to my writings folder every time. But it's worth the extra second or two of trouble.
I also have a thumb drive, where I back up my entire writings folder every week or so.
Nothing beats an offiste backup, so I do send my ms to my gmail account every now and then. Every time I send a full to an agent, that counts as a backup too. :)
I don't backup every night, and I probably should.
I also don't have a backup for my all-important notebook, which is even now at my elbow. But I tend to transcribe things from the notebook to my ms in a reasonably timely manner. This way, the first draft on my computer is actually my second.
Thanks for the suggestion, Tia! I just sent all of my "notebook" and notes files to my gmail. Now EVERYTHING is safe.
I think I heard once that some people print out their whole manuscript every once in awhile as a backup. Is that a waste of paper? It wouldn't be if it saved your work, but wouldn't some other way work better and waste less?
and your methods all sound reasonable...
I used to print out the entire manuscript, or when I finished a chapter, but since I do my editing on my computer now (I used to edit on the printouts), I don't do a manuscript printout anymore. Saving some trees. ; )
I also do the email thing. I don't have a gmail account, but my account is still huge as far as web storage.
I use my thumb drive, email and an external hard drive. And then when I'm all done with a book, I print the thing out. :)
I print my stuff out and have it on an external hard drive (huge amount of space on that thing--it's like two ipods) and sometimes I e-mail it. One of my stories is up on fictionpress.com, so I suppose that's a form of backup as well, though it wouldn't work for a published author :-P
I backup on a thumb/flash/usb/whatever you want to call it drive. One that's always attached to my desktop and one that's in my purse. I also backup to an external hard drive and I email occasionally too. However, I've always been aware that I don't do this as often as I should. Guess I better get my butt in gear and start backing up on a regular basis if I want to keep the-event-too-horrible-to-be-named from happening. Thanks for the post.
I use nortons 360 for offline backup. (This recently saved me when my HD crashed). This backup also starts when the pc has been idle for a while. Two for one here, virus and doc protection. I am now set up with two hard drives so I use windows to back up a copy at 4 am each moring to the other drive (this could easily be a thumb drive too.)And every month or so I zip up and email everything and email to myself in yahoo mail and keep a copy online there.
Thank you everyone for your comments -- great ideas!
I'm trying something different with this book. I'm using Google Docs word processor to write it and backing it up on my PC and flash drive.
Google Docs is accessible from any computer with an internet connection. So I don't have to worry about bringing my laptop or flash drive with me everywhere. I can write on my lunch hour and access the same document I access while I'm at home. Cuts down on versioning issues I sometimes have!
Plus, even if all of my computers are destroyed, the ms still exists. :)I also have it set up to work offline so that if my internet falters, it backs up to the hard drive and then syncs it with the online version with the internet is back up again. :)
I LOVE it.
Stacey, that is WAY cool! I'll definitely have to look into that.
Thanks!
I have to say this is all so helpful to me, too. I have had some "minor" disasters when the computer decided to wig out and shut down while I was writing. (And sometimes characters just don't have those same conversations in your head again.) So, the google docs post is particularly helpful. I will be looking into that as well.
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