Backup copies of your writing

A few days ago my son transferred all of my computer files from a positively ancient six year old computer to my new laptop. The transition took a while and was relatively painless. It would have taken me days to do what my son did in hours.

One of the topics we discussed during this process was the importance of having secure backup copies of all computer files. I don’t have to tell you how devastated you would be if you experienced what happened to a friend of mine.

He had been writing a novel on his laptop and this computer contained the only copy of this story. It was almost finished. He didn’t even have a paper copy or draft on paper. Some low life stole his laptop from his office and it was never recovered. Needless to say, he was devastated and took several years to get back to writing the story from scratch.

Always have backups of your writing.

My son has set up automatic backup systems of all my files. In adition, I will have copies on my stand alone USB drive. I am thinking of using DVD copies of all files, as well as on flash drives. They are now cheap enough to buy several of them and store them in different locations. Several years ago I copied all my writing files on to a CD and left them at my daughter’s home, some two hours’ drive away. This might seem overkill, but we live in an area where there is bush fire potential. We nearly got burned out five years ago so we are no longer complacent.

Good writing.