Cheesecake for the writerly soul
Dear Reader,
Lean in close; I’m about to impart one of my biggest pearls of wisdom for any writer. This is important advice, on par with how to fold a fitted sheet*, so feel free to take notes, screen shot this, or get a tattoo bearing my great sagacity.
Ready? Here goes…
…
BACKUP YOUR WRITING.
Backup the backup of your backup’s backup.
Then turn around and back it all up again.
And when you finishing backing up,
Go backup, once more, just to be sure.
…
Do I sound traumatised? Oh, I am.
This week I thought I had lost all 30,000 words of my manuscript in progress.
Like Jo March, I came home from a really rather pleasant outing, to find my manuscript had been fed to the fire by an Amy we’ll call D Drive. Plus there was a second Amy, named Dropbox, jamming the poker in there too.
I handed it with absolute grace and aplomb. Frankly, I don’t know why Jo got herself in such a state. It doesn’t feel like the cataclysmic end of the whole sorry world, at all.
Don’t worry, I am getting to the happy ending. In a most enjoyable and fitting irony, I clawed my manuscript back from the fire through a cloud storage system called Backblaze.
Take that Amy! (And a gushing thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-soooo-glad-I-married-you to the Laurie who treasures my writing and mental health enough to have himself backed up my backed up backup.)
Now, it’s Friday afternoon, so I’m letting my blood pressure settle, somewhat, with a patisserie box full of petits fours, to celebrate hard work, SAVED.
Here’s to writing your manuscript, and keeping it too…
xx Ave
PS…
I’m serious.
Go backup.
…
*Just because no one’s ever seen me fold a fitted sheet, nor appear in the same room as a folded fitted sheet — doesn’t mean I can’t.