Backing Up

In the olden days, writers used this contraption many of you have likely never encountered outside of a museum – a typewriter.  The writer would insert a sheet of paper and type away, seeing the physical proof of a story coming to life.  However, since then, mankind has done lots of stuff(developed the internet, sent probes to Mars, invented fire, etc).  Progress has made the typewriter a relic, and while that has some good pieces to it, it has also led to one VERY LARGE pitfall – losing work, sometimes months of it, if the data gets corrupted and the writer maintained no backup(or a backup near where they had the original data).

Losing this amount of effort can be soul-crushing.  I’ve actually seen writer weep when they figured out they’d lost a year’s worth of work.  That means, paranoid as I am, that I work hard to make sure I don’t hit that trap.  I save my work everywhere – my hard drive, a thumb drive, send copies to my primary email, send copies to my secondary email, etc.  This may seem like overkill, but it ensures that if something bad happens, I lose only a little bit as long as I was backing up on a regular basis.

This is necessary in the modern age.  Don’t get caught thinking you have everything in hand, only to get a virus or see a boulder fall on your house and crush your computer, and thus lose weeks to months to years of work.  Much like you may never need home insurance, you may never need this level of backup, but if you ever do need it, you’ll be thankful you invested the effort.