We have all been in the place where we realize we didn’t save. In today’s day of technology, it’s more difficult—but it can still happen. So how do you become the King or Queen of Backups and save your writing? Also, how do you protect your writing?

Here’s how: vigilantly save. Save online, save on drives, save in email, save…save…SAVE.

SAVE AS YOU WORK:

• COMPUTER
  • Shortcut for a quick-save: press CNTRL+S (at the same time)
    • Practice a quick-save every few minutes, it will become natural, and you are less likely to lose information.
• EMAIL
  • Send your work to yourself via email
    • As an attachment
    • In the body of the text
  • This not only saves your work, but automatically gives yourself copyright protection for the future (referred to as the poor man’s copyright)

BACKUP YOUR WORK:

EXTERNAL DRIVES:

• THUMB DRIVE
  • You can keep one on your key chain, or in your purse
• HARD DRIVE
  • Keep one at your house, and one in a safe place at a friend’s house
• iPod / iPhone
  • iPOD
  • iPHONE
  • iPAD
• TIME MACHINE (for MAC)
  • Remember to backup often

ONLINE BACKUP:

• THE CLOUD
  • Depending on your computer and/or smart phone choice, there is a version of the Cloud for both
    • MAC / iPHONE
    • PC
• DROPBOX
  • Allows you to create file folders, and save your files
  • These files are then accessible to you anywhere, from any computer
  • 5 GB is free, and you can pay for larger amounts of storage
  • Ability to share with anyone  you want!
• APPS
  • Apps for sharing from smart phones to computers
• GOOGLE+
• BLOGS
  • If you have sensitive writing, you can create a blog that is not public, and have all of your writing not only saved, but also unsearchable by Search Engines.