Just an early reminder:
Back up your novel. Back it up early. Back it up often. In fact, stop reading, back it up RIGHT NOW, then return to this posting (unless it's October, in which case you haven't started your novel yet). This isn't like voting - the more times you back up, the better. You want to stack that ballot box with a resounding win for your COMPLETE novel, not just a partial recovery you managed to dig up after spending several hundred dollars at a data recovery center.
But how, you ask, can I back up my novel without purchasing expensive automated back up software and dozens of redundant external hard drives to write those backups to?
I'm glad you asked. You don't need to spend top dollar to protect your creative efforts. There are plenty of cheap, if not free, ways to do it!
Email your novel to yourself. Save a copy to a floppy disk (by the way, if you still have a floppy disk drive, you SO need to upgrade your computer!!), a USB memory stick, a burnable CD/DVD. Hell, plug your digital camera into your computer and save a copy there, if necessary. Just save an extra copy somewhere OTHER than the computer/PDA/AlphaSmart/whatever you're writing it on. Anywhere. And do it every time you sit down to write.
Here's what I do. Every day, I make a copy of my novel-in-progress, with the date as part of the name. I then work on the new document. This means if my computer crashes or somehow corrupts the file I'm currently working on, I still have the previous copy safely tucked away. And every day, when I'm done writing, I email myself the latest copy of that novel.
Those of you using a typewriter (old school!) or writing by hand (even older school!) may think you don't need to make backups, but consider this: paper can burn, get eaten by a pet, be used as toilet paper in a moment of desperation, get caught up in a gust of wind, or fall into the wrong hands. So you might want to use that copy machine at work to make a backup of your novel. Or have a friend with a photographic memory read your dailies. I'm just saying.
----------
idunno, co-ML for California :: South Bay
2009 Novel: The Stephen Hawking Detective Agency
9,600 / 50,000
Oct 3, 2009 - 11 50
I do it the other way around: Copy NaNo2009.txt and name the new copy NaNo2009_bak1.txt, then bak2, bak3, and so on. But I always work on the original. That way I don't have to tell my editing software to look for a new file each time. I'm not quite as fanatical as idunno, though. I only make about 10 backups over the course of November.
5,566 / 50,000
Oct 15, 2009 - 06 26
I've learned the horrors of failing to back up my novels, unfortunately. :(
I think I'm going to try out GoogleDocs this year, and see if I can't write my entire novel on there - or, at the very least, uploading different backups of my novel into GoogleDocs via emailing myself. Not sure how that's going to work out, but it's another added buffer to my several copies on my laptop, my flash drives, and my external!
But... seriously, toilet paper? O___O
----------Elliquiy Role Playing Forums :: A different dream exists here . . .
44,033 / 50,000
Oct 15, 2009 - 08 46
Do this, do this, do this!
My laptop freaked out and died on me at about 46K last year, and it deleted the story file I had been working on. Luckily I had backed up a few days before, so I only lost about 4K, but it was very traumatic and so hard to write that 4K again and it was really tempting to just give up. So do yourself a favor. I email my story to myself on a regular (read: daily) basis, as well as periodically backing it up onto a flash drive and an external hard drive.
----------Master and Founder of NaNo Zen
NaNo 2009: Boughs of Fate, rewrite of 2004 NaNovel Phoenix Lost
44,096 / 50,000
Oct 15, 2009 - 09 27
I back up to Google Docs (as well as a flash drive) by copying and pasting the full text of the file from my word processor document. You can also upload files, which is good if you want to save each day's progress as a separate document.
I know some people like to work directly in Google Docs, though it's not for me. I believe with Google Gears you can do this even if you're not online (I'm not sure how that works).
Lisa
54,178 / 50,000
Oct 15, 2009 - 19 24
There are a lot of ways to do backups. If I might add a few points gleaned from years of programming...
Consider buying a USB memory stick (flash drive). A 1 gig stick will probably hold everything you will write for a good while (after a year's writing I'm only up to 300M). It's cheap (I've seen them on Amazon for <$5) and it will be under your control instead of on someone's server somewhere.
I would recommend that you keep not just the latest version of your novel but a copy of every change. That way, if you delete a big section without realizing and then back up the bad version (believe me, it happens) you can go back to the version before.
Obviously each file needs a unique name. I recommend using the date (year, month, day order) since it makes it easier to find things. For example novel091015.txt would be today's backup. If you have multiple files than copy them all into a folder with today's date.
You might want to keep a copy of your backups somewhere out of the house (your car, or at work). If you kept a stick in your pocket and pulled it out when you finished writing every night and put a copy on there that would be very safe.
If you run out of space you might consider deleting some (but not all) of the older versions. I usually keep one copy for every month plus one for every day of the most recent month. Maybe in this context, one every week plus one for every day of the most recent week would work for you.
I hope that helps!
Dave
------------
In theory, theory is like practice.
In practice, it isn't.
10,007 / 50,000
Oct 23, 2009 - 14 41
Very good advice and thanks for putting it out there.
I read this and thought, hey I've got it covered. I'm writing my novel remotely on a university AFS system, fully redundant and backed up. Don't have to worry.
Then I thought about it some more. I'm writing on a university AFS system, essentially unix, so a few stray commands could delete the entire thing. I still need to write off copies to a backup folder, if only to have a way to backtrack if the novel goes off in some wrong direction, and local copies wouldn't be a bad idea either.
49,036 / 50,000
Oct 28, 2009 - 22 14
Speaking as one who lost over 30K words on November 19, one year, I second this advice wholeheartedly.
Flashdrives are our friends--really! Back up your work EVERY DAY. If disaster strikes, you'll be very grateful to yourself for doing so. I also email what I've got so far to myself each week as a further back up.
Melissa
----------You can have a sound mind in a healthy body.... Or you can be a Nanonovelist!
Nanowrimo--Eavesdrop on the Voices In Your Head
39,719 / 50,000
Nov 2, 2009 - 21 13
As a nerd, here's my strategy. I use Dropbox (http://www.getdropbox.com/), which lets you automatically sync files between too computers. It lets me keep my novel updated between my laptop and desktop, and also always be able to write in MS Word (which I find easier to use than Google Docs). Everything is backed up on their servers, which in my opinion is better than something like a USB drive, since you may lose the drive and your laptop simultaneously if tragedy strikes.
Best of all, it's free, for up to 2 GB of storage (if your story is going to be bigger than 2 GB, I bow to your awesome NaNoWriMo prowess).
Hope this helps!
----------Nano blog with story excerpts here: www.andrewow.com
44,096 / 50,000
Nov 11, 2009 - 22 25
I put my thumb drive through the washer and dryer the other day (accidentally), and it survived intact. On one hand, yay for a robust backup method, but on the other, a reminder that unexpected things do happen to data, so don't forget to back up, with multiple methods if possible.
Lisa
7,200 / 50,000
Nov 11, 2009 - 22 38
Seems like a nice doc backup tool could be built around google docs pretty easily:
http://code.google.com/apis/documents/docs/3.0/developers_guide_protocol...
56,711 / 50,000
Nov 12, 2009 - 07 10
I've been uploading a copy of my work to Google Documents each night last thing before I go to bed. Even doing it manually isn't a big hassle. (And then you can authorize others to read the doc if you want.)
--Diane.
36,939 / 50,000
Nov 16, 2009 - 19 01
Every day I save my novel to a memory stick and I also email it to myself. I started to back up my novel in both of these ways during my first NaNo in 2007 so, it's habit now. As it turns out, this habit could have saved me from having to start this year's novel all over yesterday.
I had finished my writing for the day and done my backups. Then I went and did a google search for "natural cat repellants". (There are about 7 neighborhood cats using my backyard as their litterbox and think it's a good place to deposit fleas.) You'd think this was about as benign a search as there could be.
I clicked on a suggested link and POPUPS! Lots of popups, windows-looking-messages and then I saw my drives. Close! Close! Close! Closed everything as fast as I could. Just knew I'd gotten a virus. I took my laptop into work today and had a co-worker look at it. Luckily for me, he was able to remove all of the malware that ended up on my computer and it looks like everything is now ok. Whew! My novel is intact on my laptop but...what if?
So, back it up, back it up, back it up.
44,096 / 50,000
Nov 17, 2009 - 00 06
Yikes! Thanks for that cautionary tale, and so glad it's a story with a happy ending!
Lisa
45,654 / 50,000
Nov 24, 2009 - 08 18
Here's a new cautionary tale:
I backed up my novel at the beginning of the Night of Writing Dangerously, but not after. The next morning, my computer died spectacularly (but really, who needs a mother board?).
I'll probably get my data back, but not before Nov 30. Bye-bye 4k words...
(I can't decide if i'm elated that my computer waited until after TNoWD to die, or furious that it couldn't have held out 8 more days.)
----------Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.
44,096 / 50,000
Nov 24, 2009 - 13 45
Oh, how terrible, silea! Good luck recovering from that.
Lisa