Backing Up Writing Work (as you go) is Essential!

Once you lose your first sizable document, the realisation of saving or storing data as you write smacks you right in the face. Here are a couple of key file-saving tips I’ve found that’s helped me not lose my hard work.

Tip: Press CTRL + S = Save

Sure, there are shortcuts on any keyboard to help you save a document while you work and that’s nice to know. It’s better to practice it and practice it often.

Whenever I’m writing something, my fingers are constantly dancing over the keys CTRL+S (Windows shortcut). If the phone rings, those two keys are tapped before I pick the phone up. It’s become second nature to me. I don’t even know I’m doing it when I’m doing it.

I don’t wait to end a chapter to save the document it belongs to. I’ll do it now, I mean right now. (While writing this WordPress post, I saved it several times — during the last paragraph!). Like I said, my fingers dance over CTRL+S. It’s so easy that it’s automatic.

Tip: Sound/Picture editors, Excel, WordPress posts, etc., use the same save shortcut!

But that doesn’t get a writer out of every kind of file-losing trouble that can arise during a project. That practice only saves the last update of a document, which is the last version of it too. This is when I switch and go to Save As to create a whole new document.

There are times when the last save isn’t enough. You won’t know you’ll need to do this until you have to… so here are some examples of when you might:

1. Before a word substitution was applied to the texts.
2. Before page formatting took place.
3. Before the story took a left fork in the road instead of the right.
4. Or prior to the fill-in-the-blank nth number edit.

When a new book is being written, my first major saves are done in blocks of around three chapters apiece. I’ll call my first save SAVEA.docx. The next one will be SAVEB.docx and so on (.docx is the file type used by MS Word, my text editor. Your text editor may use a different one). By the time I get to the end of the book, I’ll have a set of about ten files listed from A through to J. (I’ll also save a copy of those major saves offsite when I do it — usually to cloud storage of some sort.)

As I go through the editing process of a book, I’ll do the same thing again. The entire project may contain up to 30 files that were generated at various stages during the book’s overall development — and that’s before titling, cover graphics, blurbs and other things take place. I never rely on one document.

SAVE OFTEN

SAVE IN BLOCKS

SAVE OFFSITE

I once had a friend tell me she kept all her files on her laptop computer. She bragged about how much memory it had and that it could keep her whole life in a convenient portable device. She toured the world and wrote material as she went from place to place.

Her writing projects, music edits, videos and podcasts, copies of her legal documents and all her emails were stored on it. And then one day, someone reached into her rental car and took it off the seat. Every file that mattered to her was lost. There weren’t any other copies made anywhere else.

I warned her about the danger of keeping it (the data) in one place but she said it wouldn’t happen to her as she kept the laptop close at all times. No one would get a hand on it.

Portability in modern tech means theft occurs more often. You can’t predict theft. The smaller it is, the easier it is to grab.

Portable devices also get dropped, left behind, struck by electrical surges, and covered in sand and salt spray. Sometimes the computer crashes for no obvious reason.

The only way to protect the files on the computer before any of these things happen is to make sure there’s a copy of them elsewhere. (It’s not good enough to save them on external hard drives, USB sticks, or SD cards and then leave them in the bag that the computer comes in.

So…

Save often. Save in blocks. Save offsite.

That’s my tip collective when it comes to protecting your writing (or any other work, for that matter)!

Please download and read a copy of my novel SEETHINGS for free (limited time). It was backed up many times before I pressed the publish button! Otherwise, it wouldn’t be here to enjoy!

-Michael