Back Up Your Work
Let's talk about practicing safe writing–backing up your work.
If you've been writing for any length of time (or programming), you've run into the situation where you're typing like a squirrel chewing on a nut when– Oh noes! Your computer crashed/lost power/hung/decided it didn't like you anymore. Or, Word/Scrivener crashes on you.
!!YOUR WRITING!!
(Sorry)
We've all discovered that we've lost our writing project. I had something similar happen to me this week. I got back to editing my noir and spent a few hours only to discover I was editing the wrong version. What happened? Luckily, I checked the timestamp on my file and discovered my mistake. It was a simple thing to pull up the correct version and get back to work.
The point is, after you lose your hard work, you learn to back it up. Let's talk about several ways to do that.
Auto-Save
This is the simplest, and probably least effective way. Your writing program has a setting that automatically saves your work as you type. This isn't really backing up your work, but it will protect you somewhat if your app crashes. You will, however, lose any work between the last autosave to the crash. This could be nothing, or a lot. Also, it won't help you if your file becomes corrupt, or lost.
Save As…
This is a manual process (as are most forms of backup). You use the app's "Save As" menu to save a copy of your document using a different name. You should really save the copy to two different disk drives. This will protect you if either drive becomes corrupt. You'll have at least one good copy. If you have a RAID (preferably a Mirror) that's even better–but that's beyond the scope of this post.
Versioning
Some apps will create and maintain different versions of your work. This, however, isn't really a backup since the saved data is stored in a single location.
Git
Git is a utility programmers use to backup their work and track changes (versions). There are services which in combination with apps provide this capability. Git has a lot of capabilities that are useful for writers. For example, saving versions, tracking individual line changes, and being able to recover changes. The downside is, it requires a bit of knowledge, and depending on how you use it it can cost money. Although not geared to writers, I've used it and you may want to check it out.
Off-Site (Including Cloud)
What if your house burns down? Let's hope not. But what if it does? It's not enough to just save multiple copies on different drives. You also need to protect your work from disasters by saving multiple copies off-site. That way you'll have copies in the event your house is lost. How do you do this? You save copies in someone else's house (or a company). The old-fashioned way was to save your work on a USB drive (or floppy–remember those?) and SneakerNet (old-timey term that means to literally walk something over to where it belongs.) Nowadays, we have many more options that don't require Sneakers or even Nike®s. We call it "the cloud"–oooooh! (Sorry). There are many online storage facilities; many that are free or cheap to use. The most common are iCloud and Dropbox. Not only do they protect your work in the even you lose your house (or office), you can access your work from anywhere with internet access.
Don't be lulled into a false sense of security, however. Just because it's in the cloud doesn't mean you can't lose your work. What if the internet goes down? What if Apple/Dropbox goes out of business? Yes, it's unlikely but it may happen. This brings up my final point.
Multiple Backups Are the Safest
Even if you use a cloud-based solution, you should always keep a local one. Better yet, keep multiple backups in different locations.Keep multiple copies on multiple drives at home. Keep copies on two different cloud services of your choice. Just because you keep two copies on one service, doesn't help if the service goes down.
Do It
This sounds like a lot of work, and it can be. But, you can usually use your "Save As" function to save to local and cloud locations. Get in the habit. It gets easier once you do it a few times. The problem you will run into is keeping track of all the different copies of different versions (yes, I keep each version in a different file which I back up multiple times). You'll need a good naming strategy. You can use different folders for different projects. My personal file naming convention is:
project_version_date_timeFor example:
LastCall_2.2_20210110_2013
Last Call is the name of my noir. I'm at version 2.2, and the file was saved on 01/10/2021 at 20:13.
My app does this automatically and lets me sort and match files across storage locations. If you don't like my convention, make up your own.
Backup your work. Don't assume you'll never lose it. Saving your work isn't backing it up. Practice safe writing.
Word up!