Monday, December 26, 2011

Back-up

Had a computer malfunction the other day.  Thought that I'd lost a novel, a short story collection, and assorted other bits of fiction.  Recovered everything, but I was Not Happy for a while there.

Was working on a different novel a day or two before that.  Remember how I mentioned earlier that I wanted to revive and edit a discarded novel?  I opened the original file, copied and pasted everything into a new file, and started working on that.  Came back the next day and started where I'd left off.  Then I realized that things weren't matching up.  Apparently, on the first day of edits, I'd been reworking the original copy; on the second day, I reworked the second file.  I tried to sort it out, but now I have half-a-dozen versions of the novel floating around my computer with various notes about which file is which.

Currently working out a new system for backing up my work.

2 comments:

  1. I use dropbox myself, since I can just copy and paste the document into another file on my computer and it backs up automatically online. Generally I write at ohgodohgod o'clock, so by the time I'm backing up I don't want to mess with anything more complicated than copy-paste.

    (Also, hi! This is Jae's friend Rhiannon from the board, many eons ago.)

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  2. Oh good plan Matthew. I spilt water on mine and it is in the Dr's now but I am scared. Please back up! And I've done the same thing worked on an original and a different one... a spreadsheet but lost hours of work.

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