[Cwgrad-announcements] back up your files

[Robin Russin]

I second the advice.  In fact, my first posting for a site called  
ScriptCoach was this:


I’m going to give you the most important advice regarding your  
writing that you will ever get. Character development? Hero has a  
dilemma? Villain has a plan? Sure, but those can wait. Solid story  
structure? Great dialogue? Innovative plot? All absolutely essential,  
but not as important as these five words:

Back Up Your Work. NOW.

This commandment should be constantly in view, written out and  
posted, along with whatever motto or inspirational phrase you have  
tacked above your computer. Yeah, yeah, that’s obvious, I can hear  
you saying. I’ll get around to it, I do it once every couple of weeks  
anyway.

Not good enough. Your computer is one power-surge, spilled of coffee  
or evil, vindictive spirit of a former lover away from crashing. As  
in crashing so badly that no techno-geek at the Genius bar or  
anywhere else will be able to retrieve your files. And even if they  
can, it’s time and money most writers can’t afford. And that day’s  
worth, or week’s worth, or month’s worth of hard-won creative  
battles, problems solved, scenes polished, dialogue finally working,  
is gone, except insofar as you have the energy and strength of memory  
to recapture it all.

As someone who teaches writers, it astounds me how my students will  
spend days working on their outlines, researching their stories,  
creating character sheets, etc.; weeks and months building their  
scripts, overcoming procrastination, self-doubt and sheer weariness  
(not to mention the time they succumb and drift over to MySpace or  
YouTube or whatever other way they avoid their writing while still  
sitting at the computer, pretending to do something) - and yet, AND  
YET, they will not find the few seconds it takes to back up their  
work. And then come the tales of woe: the crappy computer they bought  
second-hand (it was all they could afford) bit the dust, and they  
lost everything, except for whatever they might have emailed to the  
class or printed out. Which means, usually, at least a whole week’s  
worth of writing is gone. Almost nothing can be more discouraging.

Look, the computer is a wonderful thing. Cut and pasting no longer  
involves actual scissors and glue. White-Out? Bet you younger writers  
never heard of it. But computers are temperamental and unpredictable,  
unlike good old actual paper. So get yourself two back-up devices (in  
case one of those screws up, too): a cheap, one gigabyte flashdrive  
you can plug in anywhere (if you have a laptop), and either a zip  
drive or an external hard drive where you can back up when you’re at  
your desk.

And then, at least once a week, PRINT OUT WHAT YOU’VE WRITTEN. As the  
nice folks at Nike say, just do it. Create a file for recent work,  
print out your stuff, and file it away. Why? Because if your computer  
files are corrupted on a failing hard drive, your back-up files will  
also be corrupted. Your computer, pre-crash, may be able to open them  
flawlessly, but when you later try to open your backed-up files on a  
new, non-corrupted  machine, they may not work. Really. I’ve seen  
this happen half a dozen times. Your only remaining copies will then  
be the ones you printed out. And if you hate the idea of retyping it  
all into your new computer, guess what, you can scan those pages and  
use the Optical Character Recognition program that now comes with  
almost every printer/scanner, and you have your text files back.

So…what are you waiting for? BACK UP YOUR WORK - NOW!


On Mar 19, 2007, at 12:43 PM, <khill002 at student.ucr.edu> wrote:

> I'm not really keen on emailing listservs, but I just wanted to  
> send out a
> message saying I really encourage everyone to back up their  
> important files--
> use disks, external hard drives, flash sticks, or just email files  
> to yourself. I just
> lost my complete hard drive this weekend. Luckily, I've been  
> backing stuff up, so
> I don't think I've lost many word files. And I am really grateful  
> for that. But I
> know people who've lost it all, and it's horrifying. We're writers,  
> and we have to
> protect our words. So, just a note to remind you, be safe!!
>
> Kaite
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> Cwgrad-announcements mailing list
> Cwgrad-announcements at lists.ucr.edu
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