Today’s blog post is a PSA. Not as inspiring as “We Can Do It!” or as eye opening as “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.” But it is an important one nonetheless.
BACKUP YOUR WORK.
There. I said it. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that computers crash, glitch and fail occasionally. Software and applications are not foolproof. Which is why you should…
BACKUP YOUR WORK.
My kids found this out the hard way as well. No one likes to listen to a fifth grader sob over the fact that the book report he worked so hard on all week is gone. Vanished. Or the freshman in high school, whose grades actually do matter, who is devastated when the trifold brochure she created for World Geography disappeared the day before it was due. Poof. And so on and so forth.
BACKUP YOUR WORK.
Why am I being so repetitive about this, you ask? Isn’t it obvious? Pretty much anyone who uses a computer knows the pitfall of not saving your work. And not backing it up. But this week, I got a big reminder. And I didn’t like it. Which is why I am making this PSA.
BACKUP YOUR WORK.
I’ve been writing book one in a new series. It’s a spin off of My Best Mistake so some of the characters will be familiar, but there will be some new ones as well. Things were going well so I booked a date with my editor. November 15. That’s when I will submit a draft of the book and would be able to make an announcement to you, gentle reader, when new reading material will be available.
However, there was a problem. I opened my writing app on Monday to find that everything I had done from the previous week was gone. Gone. Like it never happened.
I calmly pulled up the backup for the days in question. The files were there, but the work was not. I played around for hours, trying to figure out where the data could be, but to no avail. I had to start over. Side note: the version control on the app failed when I opened the file on a different computer. I suspect user error caused the failure, which is all the more reason to…
BACKUP YOUR WORK
Now, I know this isn’t as serious as it felt. Rewriting three or four chapters takes time but it isn’t life threatening or an issue of national security. It is just a pain in the butt.
It is, however, a mood killer. I was stoked about the scenes I’d written and it felt like the characters were coming together. I remembered bits and pieces about what I crafted, but not enough to be able to recreate it word for word.
Instead, I spent Monday redrafting. The new version doesn’t feel as crisp as the original, but it’s hard to tell when I am still irritated by the situation. Maybe in a few days when I can read the chapters in question without the sinking feeling in my stomach I’ll feel better.
But for now, the best thing I can do is remind you to…
BACKUP YOUR WORK.
Until next week…
Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash