Photo from Flickr, by Eric Baum
“Noooooo!” A blood curdling scream emanates from your lips. You stare at the computer screen in disbelief. In an instant, months of work are gone…erased from existence.
Technology is great but we need to remember: a computer is a machine and machines break. Now it may not go all Terminator on you, but you do have real concerns such as Hackers, viruses and other anomalies that can infiltrate and destroy all your hard work in the blink of an eye.
With a few simple precautions, you can be assured your manuscript will be preserved.
Back-Up Isn’t a Four Letter Word
The phrase “My dog ate my homework” has been replaced with “The computer ate my manuscript.” Words that send stabbing pains into the back of every author.
I have learned from experience to back up – frequently. As a graphic designer, the thought of recreating logos, brochures or the like due to computer failures makes you want to crawl away and hide – forever. Unfortunately, devastating crashes have happened in my career more times than I want to remember and each time I would reprimand myself “Why didn’t you back up you dummy!”
So what can you do about protecting your manuscript?
I made backing up my work a routine. At the end of every day I make a master backup on every new project I had worked on: to external HD, flash drive and for crucial projects, I upload to my server. Here are a few of the ways I use to back up work:
Backup. The standard protection. This include:
- Print. An antiquated way of manuscript backup that works. With an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program, you can easily re-scan your printed manuscript into a word file.
- CD
- Flash Drive
- External Hard drive. a good way for manuscript backup and keep your main computer system uncluttered.
- Email. Emailing your manuscript to yourself or a trusted friend. Yahoo and GMAIL are easy backup emails and free, though may be limited to file size.
- Blog. Copy the entire manuscript and paste it into a blog post that is set either private and draft. To further secure you don’t accidentally post, schedule the post date to 2050.
- Google Docs. I only recommend this if you keep the file secure and remove it after you are done.
Virus Protection
An absolute must for your computer. The cost is minimal compared to the alternative. If you are working without virus protection, then your run the risk of “infecting” your manuscript file, and in some cases, no form or back up will save you.
