Forum / Preserving our writing

• 
  Kevin Myrick

  Apr 16, 05:11pm

  Good Saturday afternoon F'nauts,

  Last night as storms rolled through Northwest Georgia, my beloved home Scribbler's Shanty had a tree knocked down on top of the roof. Fortunately for me, damage was limited to the ceiling and roof, with only a little water dripping in from the ceiling.

  However, this latest distraction from my creative life has gotten me thinking about how I should be preserving my creative life. MOST of my archives (as I like to call them, I know other people refer to them as "letters" or simply "all that crap I keep in notebooks") are handwritten on legal pads (or as was the case in college, in spiral notebooks.)

  So I want some advice. What's the best way to preserve all of this without having to worry about storms coming and taking it all out? And I'm talking about YEARS of work I've never bothered to type. I'd say 10 percent of everything I've written is actually online, with 90 percent of this stuff handwritten.

  Would photographing or scanning everything be the best way? Should I keep it all in the big plastic tubs like I have it now? I want to hear your opinion.

  Danke,
  Kev

• 
  W.F. Lantry

  Apr 16, 06:20pm

  Toni Morrison, so the story goes, had all her manuscripts in her house along the Hudson. Then the house caught fire, and burned down. She stood outside, repeating "My manuscripts. My manuscripts." At least that's how I heard the story.

  And imagining her there, imagining yourself standing there, should be all the motivation you need to go out, buy a scanner (less than 100 bucks for a good one), and scan those babies, one after the other. Then find a place to store it off site (wordpress is great for that, but even mailing them to yourself on gmail would do).

  By the way, things did actually work out for Toni Morrison: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/28/nyregion/toni-morrison-s-manuscripts-spared-in-christmas-fire.html But you might not be so lucky.

  Thanks,

  Bill

• 
  Bill Yarrow

  Apr 16, 06:22pm

  "even mailing them to yourself on gmail"
  Having just lost 15 years of stuff I was saving on Gmail, I might reconsider that as a storage option!

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Apr 16, 06:51pm

  Kevin, why not back up on a flash drive. 2 flash drives.

• 
  W.F. Lantry

  Apr 16, 07:15pm

  Ouch, Bill. Sorry to hear that!

  I guess the key is a variety of places. I have my machine, Kate's laptop (the database of record), the private wordpress blog where I do all my first drafts, gmail. If we lose one, or even two, it won't be disaster.

  Hope you find a way to recover!

  Thanks,

  Bill

• 
  Kevin Myrick

  Apr 16, 07:21pm

  Here's a link to my post and photos of zee tree: http://wp.me/pbJaJ-QM

• 
  Lynn Beighley

  Apr 17, 01:51am

  I keep lots of stuff at docs.google.com. And emailing it to yourself is a grand idea.

• 
  Linda Simoni-Wastila

  Apr 17, 11:53am

  Kevin, so sorry to hear of your storm damage. I arrived in Raleigh yesterday about 15 minutes before the tornado hit less than 5 miles from my mom's. We're safe and well (and obviously have power and itnernet) but the city is a mess and made me think of how to save stuff, too.

  One reason I keep a blog is to keep copies of my writings.

  BUT... remember to back up your blog. Blogger has an export function which zips it into an xml file (keeps content and comments but not sidebars and widgets).

  I also email myself my docs. But Bill Y's experience concerns me -- I had the same thing happen to my blog (hacked when I used a non-google widget and the google bot shut me down; hence, the export of my blog from now on).

  The best defense is a strong offense, so invest in a decent portable hard-drive and back up on a regular basis and store somewhere offsite (work, a friend, family). I find flashdrives too easy to lose, too easy to break down. Email yourself your docs in between (use two different email accounts to avoid Bill's problem). Google docs also works for backup, and there are a host of other web-based storage places out there, many of them cheap and/or free. Peace...

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Apr 17, 02:36pm

  I lost the handwritten manuscript of a completed novel (the only copy) somewhere between North Carolina and Chicago in the early seventies. The loss devastated me.

  These days, I have flash drives stashed in my car, a brief case. I have CDs in various locations ... and all updated regularly. I write between 1,000 and 3,000 words per day, every day, so it adds up.

  Besides the physical backups, I also utilize a 'cloud' database, Dropbox, which is free for up to 2 Gb storage. If you lose your notepad or your computer crashes, you can access Dropbox from anywhere with your password and retrieve all your files.

  If you're serious about your writing, secure storage of your work should be a prime issue.

• 
  Thomas Pluck

  Apr 17, 02:40pm

  I use Google Docs and export it as a whole- it downloads it as a zip file- to an encrypted volume on a flash drive and a laptop, every couple of days.
  I also put the encrypted volume (Using free software TrueCrypt) on Dropbox.

  Never hurts to be safe, especially when it's this easy. I accidentally lost all my notes due to a crappy Android program, and it still stings. But the best ideas rise again like zombies from the graveyard of your fertile mind...

• 
  Gloria Mindock

  Apr 19, 05:50pm

  I made copies of all my writing and put them on disc and gave them to one of my friends. At least my work is someplace else. I like what some of you do for backups too.

  Hey Linda, glad you and your family are ok from all the tornadoes that hit in NC. My sister and her family live next to Raleigh but they are fine with no damage to the house.

• 
  MaryAnne Kolton

  Jul 17, 05:25pm

  Of course, now there are such places as Dropbox and other "clouds" that offer secure
  storage in a place far, far away. . . .

• 
  Joani Reese

  Jul 17, 05:38pm

  My son set up Dropbox for me because I wanted to transfer files between my Mac and my PC laptop, and it lost all my accepted work between computers somewhere in the aether. The owners also just announced that Dropbox has the right to use any material you post in their little heaven as a ploy to get Google or some other giant to snap them up. It's not as safe as you think. Mac has a new program called "Time Machine" that involves hooking a second hard drive to the main computer, and it saves literally everything from every minute forever. I like that idea, and work doesn't depend on an outside source to exist.

• 
  MaryAnne Kolton

  Jul 17, 08:31pm

  Joani, glad you told me about Dropbox, They sent me an email last week and there was nothing in it. I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and pay itunes or someplace more established to store my work. I have an external hard drive as a back up but the thought of trying to corral the cats and the dog and find my purse and the lockbox with all the important papers and the external drive in case of fire or flood makes me want to take a Xanax and go to bed. Thanks for the info.

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