Storage Wars

No, not the show where people fight to buy the contents of abandoned storage lockers, I’m talking storing your electronic files.

It goes without saying that you should back your work up and back it up often. There’s nothing worse than that feeling you get when you step away from the keyboard for just a second only to come back to find that your toddler erased everything you’ve laboured over for the last several weeks, or the cat jumped up on the desk and knocked your cold coffee onto the keyboard. So you already know to back your work up.

What I’m interested in is what you back your work up to.

In the beginning, I used WordPerfect, which automatically backed my work up as I typed. Then I graduated to Microsoft Word, which has the same feature. Once a week or so I’d back all my files up to a floppy disk or two (or three – they didn’t hold a whole lot). When I got a computer with a CD burner in it (I told you it was in the beginning – we’re talking dawn of time here) every couple of months I’d burn everything to a CD.

Fast forward a decade or two to when flash drives (aka thumb drives) became available. My first flash drive cost $80 and held 2 gigabytes of data – which was a big deal at the time. I could back my whole computer onto it! Not that I did, just all of my files. And I mean ALL my files, photos included.

Walmart currently has 32G USB flash drives with their back-to-school stuff for under $10. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! LOL

I have at least a dozen flash drives now, some empty, some with stuff on it. And I have an 64G SD card with a neat little gizmo that turns it into a flash drive that I can back everything onto. I can’t help thinking there’s got to be a better way of doing this.

Seriously, I’m only working on a few files at once, so most of what’s on these flash drives is storage. I’d like to find somewhere permanent to store some of these unused/finished files, but where? I don’t trust the cloud, and I live in fear of something happening to the flash drives, so I keep copies of everything on flash drives and my computer. I have an external hard drive, but it’s still in the box because my daughter had a bad experience with one and lost everything.

I’ve heard of other writers who don’t trust their computers and keep all of their work on flash drives. When they want to write, they stick the appropriate flash drive into the USB port and away they go. I don’t know that I could be comfortable doing that.

So what’s the answer? I think this will require some careful research.

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Wordage Report

Editing – 4 hours
On a little story that has no name yet.

Blood Ties – 1,657 words
I’m getting steadily better.

Blog Posts – includes the post for my regular blog, but not the prompt story.
401 (regular blog)+ 923 + 357 = 1,681 words total

Weekly Prompt – 524 words

Total Words – 3,862

New Prompt
I'm not sure where this came from, it came from my prompts document. And it should go without saying that it's subject to change:
One morning in a restaurant, an old widow and a priest summon a zombie using only a clay tablet.

Goals From Last Week:
I got all my blog posts done, including a short one for my regular blog. The trick is to try and get them done early – so much less stressful!

Blood Ties is progressing nicely, but I really have to work out a Howard scene next and so far my mind is coming up blank as to what’s happening with him. Maybe Anakaron has him under a spell . . .

I was late again with the prompt story, but that was bad timing on my part. I kept putting it off and putting it off, and next thing I know it’s Thursday afternoon and I decided to write a Ghazal for my poetry group meeting that evening. Came home from the meeting and realized I didn’t like the prompt so I picked a new one and only got a bit of a start on it that night. Finished it up Friday and posted it when I was done.

The nameless story I’m editing is only a couple of pages long, and I’m more rewriting it than editing it I think. It was a former prompt story, and I as I was writing it I thought of changes I’d make if I had the time and I was smart enough to write them down.

Goals For This Week:
1. Get that pesky Howard scene done. Actually, I think I need two of them, but one for sure and then I can start making plans for his rescue.
2. New prompt story – and hopefully I’ll get to it earlier this week so not only will I leave myself enough time to get it done on time, but also to find a new prompt if I need to.
3. I actually almost finished that little nameless story, so I want that done so I can find another one.

And there’s what I’ll be up to this week. How about you?