Final day of our backup discussion! Have you all taken care of your files yet? Because really, if you’ve been hanging with us this week you should be panicking about your files and making plans to routinely backup (on and off-site).
My backup obsession began with my kids’ baby photos. I’ve got copies of their pictures with my parents, my in-laws, the bank vault, our house, and various online photo companies. Yeah, I’m not losing those.
Protect whatever is most precious to you.
To a writer? It’s the WIP.
If you don’t know how or don’t want to bother with all the backup options discussed this week, at the very least, email yourself your WIP every time you work on it. Takes under 30 seconds and will give you peace of mind.
Backups are useful for not only replacing damaged files, but also as stores of copies in case you need to revert to an earlier manuscript.
Random example pulled from nowhere: Say you are converting your 3rd person POV middle-grade manuscript to 1st person POV. You start doing massive Find/Replace runs with the obvious replacements. The process is going so well you decide to try a few trickier “replace” moves. Everything looks great and you go to bed happy. Then at the END of your next editing session you notice something strange. Odd. How did that get there? And there? And there?! Yes, you’ll be glad you have an old copy to go back to.
So, to summarize some backup options:
- Stephanie’s husband’s Command File
- Kitty’s MyBook/Time Machine combo
- From the comments this week: online backup solution http://www.dropbox.com via brianjwalton and Jim Hill
- Shonna’s super simple email solution
Find the one(s) that work for you and start a new routine today.
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3 users responded in this post
DiskAgent. The parents of one of my students gifted me with this. i set it up quickly for online backup. Still need to explore more, but seems to do the job.
Or if you’re using Scrivener to write your WIP you can use the Snapshot feature to freeze your text in time in case you have to go back to it.
Thanks, What If Girl, for another one to look at.
And Jane, thanks for the reminder, I keep forgetting to do that!
Shonna, I like to feel confident in making my edits, including cutting parts I think need to be cut regardless of the fact that they are the precious words I’ve written with love. So I save my WIP every time I work on it with the day’s date – “WIP 031510″ on March 15, “WIP 031710″ on March 17, etc. That way, you also protect yourself against file corruption as well as changing your mind about an edit.
Thanks for all the great ideas everyone! I hope we all find an “insurance policy” that proves its worth!
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