If you're brave enough to fly

As I sit here right now, I’m going through my usual routine on a Friday.

This routine?  After I finish writing, I back up my current WIP folder (neatly generated for me by Page Four) to a flash drive.  I also back up this folder to Dropbox, which is one of my favourite things in the world (and doubly so this week, since they just released an app for the iPhone).

These first two steps, I do every day.  On a Friday, I also burn a CD of my entire writing folder.  This contains every word I have ever written, along with all of my submission information, some of which reaches back longer than I care to admit.

I have a slightly ridiculous number of CDs burned now, many of which (clearly) contain redundant data.  But honestly, I’d rather deal with having a few stacks of CDs that duplicate each other than losing my work.  I’ve had it happen before – and seen it happen, in spectacular and dreadful fashion – when I was writing my PhD thesis to another student, who lost about three completed chapters of a thesis.

It makes life easier for me that I only ever write on my laptop.  I’m nowhere near as good as backing up my desktop, I will admit.  But the loss of files there would be nowhere as catastrophic.

Sometimes it’s a pain keeping on top of it – on a bad day, I’d like to just shut down the laptop and walk away.  But I make myself back things up as part of my routine.  And if you haven’t noticed by now that I’m a creature of habit who thrives on routine, you haven’t been watching too closely.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.