Protecting Your Livelihood - Part 4

Currently reading - Greywalker by Kat Richardson

I guess I and other pundits can't say this often enough--BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!!

This week a member of one of the local RWA chapters lost her entire manuscript.  Yes, the WHOLE FREAKIN' THING!  She'd only saved it to a flashdrive, not to her harddrive, and the flashdrive decided to croak.  Add on that (a) she's a published author and (b) her manuscript was due to her editor in a couple of weeks, you can feel the heart-stopping panic she experienced when she opened the file, only to see nonsensical characters.

If you use any computer, multipe backups are a necessity, not a luxury.  External hardrives would be the most expensive option, other than another computer, but even they are relatively cheap compared to the ER bill when you stroke out over losing an entire manuscript.  Flashdrive, hardrive, burned to a CD, or copied to floppy disk (assuming you can still find one), it doesn't matter.  Multiple versions of your file--even better.

I've been lucky.  The most I've ever lost is a couple of pages because I literally do all of the above at different stages of the week.

And when all else fails, have a geek in your pocket.  This writer was lucky.  Another RWA gal and her computer wizard husband were able to retrieve the file through some techno-magic, so our writer friend will meet her deadline after all.

Business Plan Part 12.5 - Back-ups

Currently reading - Kitty Goes to War by Carrie Vaughn

Angie left a comment on yesterday's post about necessary equipment that I really should have mentioned. So a major thanks to Angie!

If you're using a computer, then back-ups are an absolute necessity. No one wants to re-write three chapters, or the whole manuscript, that were lost due to an effed-up hard drive.

Angie mentioned flashdrives, also known as thumb drives, jump drives, memory sticks, etc. I've got two, Skipper from Madagascar and Darth Maul.

Darth Maul is actually a black and red 4GB Dane flash drive from Target. It was roughly $10 plus tax. Skipper was a a special card from Hallmark released in conjunction with Madagascar 2 a couple of years ago. He only has 1GB of space, but I find a penguin butt sticking out of my laptop highly amusing. (Yes, I am the weirdo who laughed hysterically at the Garfield tails sticking out of gas tanks and trunk lids back in the '80's.)

It's also not a bad idea to have an external hard drive for backups if you can afford one.

Some folks I know e-mail their wips to their own accounts. Other have space on remote servers for storage.

One caveat I would stress is to have offsite storage for back-ups. You never know when disaster might strike. I've known or have heard about authors whose homes have been destroyed by fire or hurricane and lost all their work.

There's lots of options, so check out which ones work for your style.