Writing Backup Plan
Ranked #1,150 in Books, Poetry & Writing, #47,088 overall
My writing is the most valuable thing in my house!
When challenged this week to say what I'd grab first if I had to run out of the house due to a fire, I was hard pressed to decide between my external hard drive and my journals. Then I realized it was all the same issue. I want to protect the things I've written. I didn't spend years writing just to feed a fire or soak up a flood!
I'm a novelist. I've also written a lot of other things -- short stories, poems, songs, and articles of all kinds. Forgive me for having a silly ego, but somehow I'd love to have my writing preserved. I have in my imagination the thought that someone will someday value my writing and want to save it at some college or university -- or even the county historical society. But of course, for that to happen, these pages will have to be preserved.
This all brings me to the topic of this lens. How to preserve writing. I'll show you what I'm doing now, and we'll delve into alternative writing protection strategies.
"Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade. " -- Rudyard Kipling
"What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?"
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
External hard drive
...my most valuable writing is digital!
I've been writing novels since 2001, and every single one of them is in digital form. I printed one of them out once but found it to be a waste of money and tree-life. So protecting my digital masterpieces (mesterpieces?) is of primary importance. Each of those novels potentially could earn me $5000, more or less.
My first line of defense is a good detachable hard drive. I purchased a Maxtor external hard drive about two years ago and have been very happy with it. It can keep about 160 gigabytes of information and so far it isn't even half full. It also contains all my digital photographs, so I'd also be able to save them if I grabbed this hard drive before leaving my home in an emergency.
Forget the computers! Sure, I'd like to take my old friend Dell and the e-Machine too, but if I didn't take them, it wouldn't be a big deal compared to the data I have stored up on my Maxtor external hard drive.
External hard drives
Maxtor STM310004OTA3E5-RK OneTouch 4 Plus 1 TB 3.5" USB 2.0/FireWire400 External Hard Drive
Amazon Price: $209.99 (as of 02/16/2012)
"Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts." -- Charles Dickens
Flash drive
...secondary backup!
Another good backup system for my writing is my flash drive which I purchased through Amazon at a very good price. I've used this a lot. I transferred my entire writing directory onto the flash drive and still have room left over for other things. I use it a lot to transfer files from one computer to another, and can take my work with me on the flash drive when I go to the local computer center downtown.
With a flash drive, I can fit all my novels into my teeny tiny coin pocket in my jeans. I find that to be very, very comforting!
The SanDisk Cruzer
...this is the one I bought.
SanDisk Cruzer Micro 16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive SDCZ6-016G-A11
Amazon Price: $29.49 (as of 02/16/2012)
More flash drives
...that white/purple 4gig Kingston seems to be the most popular.
"If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work." -- Ogden Nash
Email yourself a backup copy of your novel
...yes, store it online!
Whenever I write a novel, I email copies of my work-in-progress to myself at my Gmail account. You could get the same effect by emailing yourself at Yahoo or any other online email service. I like Gmail because there's so much storage space available.
"Hold fast to your dreams, for without them life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly." -- Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes Standing on the Stoop in Front of His House in Harlem
Buy at AllPosters.com
Google Docs
...another great online storage site.
I've posted chapters of some of my most recent novels at Google Docs. Each time I finish a chapter, I post it in a separate file, then link all the files into one folder. In the folder I also keep a document with "extra notes" and one with "characterization notes". This is very helpful while writing and revising, and provides another good backup.
As you can see, I backup my work in many places. If one method fails, something else will still be there.
"Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable." -- Jane Austen
Some of my journal notebooks.
Journal and file storage
...most writers still have a huge amount of writing on paper.
I've got every bit of writing, just about. I have journals from twenty or thirty years back, plus every noveling attempt I ever made before I finally finished one in 2001. I have papers I wrote in college in the 1970s and songs I wrote in the 1980s. I have newspapers and magazines my articles were published in. I don't want to lose any of this!
I keep my voluminous writing stored in a portable storage container next to my bedroom window. If anything happens to my house I want to grab that box and run!
Portable storage containers
Rubbermaid 77822 Roughneck Portable File Box with Extra Capacity, 16w x12.75D x12.25h
Amazon Price: (as of 02/16/2012)
"One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake." -- Anton Chekhov
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." -- Leo Tolstoy
My novels and blogs
"Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book." -- Mickey Spillane
I stored my earlier novels on these diskettes.
Store your writing in more than one place
...because you never know what will work best.
Here's one reason why you should have more than one backup system for your writing. I stored a lot of my writing on the diskettes in the box you see above, and now no longer have a computer than can read them!
"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself." -- William Faulkner
Online data storage sites
- Online Backup, Data Backup & Remote Backup Solutions from Mozy.com - Welcome
- Mozy is the industry-leading solution for online backup, remote backup, data backup, computer backup, backup software, internet backup, and remote office backup - back up your important files, photos, documents and more over the internet.
- Boxstr File Storage
- Free file hosting and backup file storage service. A simply way for businesses, professionals, and individuals to share files, music, and images with others. Folders can also be set to "private" so your writing will be safe here.
"For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Your comments are welcome...
I look forward to getting some feedback. If you have any other ideas about how writing collections can be preserved and protected, please let us know!
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anupma
Feb 11, 2012 @ 3:01 am | delete
- Awesome Lense and the best quotes. . . I love Tolstoy's quote. Thanks for sharing.
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anupma
Feb 11, 2012 @ 3:01 am | delete
- Awesome Lense and the best quotes. . . I love Tolstoy's quote. Thanks for sharing.
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TomMaybrier
Feb 3, 2012 @ 5:22 pm | delete
- Love this lens! I use Dropbox to back up my writing. A plus is it's always available to me anywhere there's a computer. The app for iPhone is great as well!
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ZodiacImmortal
Dec 2, 2011 @ 3:53 pm | delete
- OMG! I'm so happy to hear I'm not the only one that Multi (O.C.) backs up everything. I have my finger flash, external & a really tiny (coin size) flash drive that I have my poems on as well as the stories I have currently started. Plus I also have my binder with the finished poems in it & a smal pocket journal I have them printed & pasted in (as some are in different fonts) I've included this lens on my Epic Ballad of Poetry lens (its in the Book Repair & creative writing featured lens section) With the stories I usually write them on paper, then wait a day or 2 later to type it up. (this way I also correct & revise as well) Poems I sort of do the same. FOr some reason I cannot 'write' on a computer! lol
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flycatcher
Nov 30, 2011 @ 9:30 am | delete
- This is an extremely useful lens. I've just finished backing up a batch of a friend's manuscripts onto Dropbox, as one more way to keep them safe in addition to copies on several external storage devices and printed copies in several different locations. Sure, that can seem like overkill to some, but when you think of all the hours of "blood, sweat and tears" brainwork that those pieces of writing represent... redundant backup just makes very good sense. Thumbs up to you for this one!
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daphnedangerlove
Nov 30, 2011 @ 4:31 am | delete
- I highly recommend using a service like Syncplicity (which syncs up data across all your computers) or a dropbox like service. Syncplicity has saved me many times!
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bbudoyono
Oct 18, 2011 @ 5:26 pm | delete
- Very inspiring.
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Wednesday_Elf
Oct 10, 2011 @ 8:52 am | delete
- After having a computer crash several years ago, I immediately learned to back up my pictures I store for my Etsy Shop on a SanDisk Cruzer flash drive I wasn't 'computer savvy, enough before that to understand what I could (and did) lose. Just this week I learned about Google Docs. Preserving and protecting your writing collections or photo collections is important. Thanks for the reminder.
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YayasHome
Oct 10, 2011 @ 12:34 am | delete
- My whole life, I've been a writer... in mind an' spirit. I've never had an organizational mindset, though, so I never really knew how to organize my files. Thank you so very much for spelling it out in such plain English. This is extremely helpful. Thanks VERY much.
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Yourshowman
Sep 24, 2010 @ 10:01 pm | delete
- Useful and Helpful Lens. Thumbs Up. great Stuff
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ulla_hennig
Jul 25, 2009 @ 10:23 am | delete
- Great lens! I very much like the quotations of the various writers. I think they are very motivating and inspiring. thanks for sharing!
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grannysage
Jul 24, 2009 @ 8:45 pm | delete
- Wow, you gave me a lot to think about. I also have years worth of writing stored in a storage box. The old newspaper clippings are getting yellow and fragile. I need to scan them into the computer, but hadn't thought farther than that. And yep, I have those diskettes too that are no longer readable. Excellent ideas.
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BarbRad
Jul 23, 2009 @ 11:38 pm | delete
- A good reminder. I hadn't thought of the g-mail backup. So much of what I wrote was before I had a computer or on an obsolete computer. I'm just now playing with my OCR software. I used it to get that long Sarah poem back from a print-out I did on an early PC. It was so faint I had to do a lot of fixing. There is so much still there to mine. I loved the posters you chose for your illustrations.
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paperfacets
Jul 23, 2009 @ 10:50 pm | delete
- This opens an idea for Senior Squids. Should we back up our lens some how?
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kimmanleyort
Jul 23, 2009 @ 3:51 pm | delete
- Love the quotes and pictures. Very valuable!
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roamingrosie
Jun 29, 2009 @ 8:57 pm | delete
- Great advice, and great choice of quotes, too!
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bdkz
Jun 27, 2009 @ 5:25 pm | delete
- Great lens!
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Beverly
Jun 26, 2009 @ 5:26 pm | delete
- This is great information, Linda. I do some of it, but need to do more.
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MeltedRachel
Jun 26, 2009 @ 5:25 pm | delete
- Great (and important) lens! I also e-mail everything I write to my gmail account! Lensrolling to Rachel writing.
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rms
Jun 26, 2009 @ 7:41 am | delete
- excellent!
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"What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce."
-- Mark Twain
by LindaJM
A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug. - Patricia Neal
My blog: Linda Jo Martin
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