Back it up, folks!!!!

[jhetley]

A writer of my acquaintance has lost the contents of her novel file. The file is still there, but empty. Now digging frantically through the temp folders for automatic backup files, weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Sackcloth and ashes. We're talking professional author here, under contract, advances, deadlines, the whole meghilla.

Back it up. Back it up _again_, using removable media. Duplicate the files on another computer and verify that you can read them _there_. Send a copy off to your mother.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Save to a new, dated file every day so you can't lose more than a day's work no matter what. Mail it to your webmail (yahoo, gmail, whatever). Get a Yahoo briefcase and back it up there, too.

Gosh, yes. You can't be too paranoid.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Heck, print it. Daily. The money spent on paper is well worth the cost.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I print out, chapter by chapter rather than daily. Not for the backup, though that is good insurance, but I can't proofread worth a damn on the screen. Words look different on paper. And I find that marking up the text with a red pen and circles and arrows and filling in paragraphs up the right margin doesn't work that well on a computer, either. (Yeah, a variant on a blonde joke.)

For those of you holding your breath for the damsel in distress, she has managed to recover useable text. Ritual suicide averted.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I hear this! When I was programming, I couldn't debug for shit online either. I had to have the actual printout of my compiled program, and a red pen. You can't flip back and forth between 2 pages to check code-matching online.