Backing Up Our Work
by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
And now for a very brief public service announcement. Please back up your work.
What way is easiest for you? There are so many options.
The best way is to have a digital copy backed up—on a USB/thumb drive, as an email attachment in an email sent to yourself. In Dropbox. On Google Drive or Skydrive (these are free options for cloud backup). On a server in your home. Or just print the thing if you don’t mind retyping it if you lose a digital version.
My children laugh at me because I wander through rooms as they do homework and ask, “Have you backed up? Are you backing up? Have you hit save?” They’ll say, “Yes, Mom.” I’ll think they’re just placating me (sometimes they are) and will say, “Let me see how you’ve saved the file.” If I don’t see a file name for the document, there’s trouble on the horizon and Mom is mad. That’s another way we lose work and the train of thought—if our computer freezes and needs a reboot. And then I ask them to email me their most important files for school.
My son, a high school junior, asked me a few days ago how often I hit save as I’m writing. Every couple of sentences. No joke. He asked how often I back up and I answered, “Every writing session.”
There are programs that will do this automatically for you, so you don’t have to think about it. But since I’ve trained myself to do it automatically, I don’t need the programs.
I’ve lost work before and it’s not fun. In fact, despite all my efforts, I lost a research-related document last week that I’d spent a day working on. Not sure how it happened. It seemed that maybe I accidentally hit select-all and delete…and then saved the empty file.
We work hard. We have ideas and dialogue and scenes that are hard to replicate. Hit save. Then back up to an outside device or cloud or piece of paper.
How good are you about backing up your documents? What’s your favorite way to save your work?
Image: MorgueFile: Alvimann
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