Last week, my dad sent me an urgent text message: “Lost all my work! 800 words gone.”
“What happened???” I wrote back.
It turned out he had been using an online word-processor called Draft to write a blog post. But, suddenly, Draft went offline. He kept refreshing the page, but it seemed like the entire application had crashed.
Not only had he lost his blog post, but also four other posts that he had written that month.
If you’ve ever lost all of your work, you know how awful it feels. First, there’s that moment of denial, and then there’s the absolute heart-rending dismay. I think I might have felt worse than my dad did, especially because I was the one who had recommended he try Draft last year.
I searched the Internet to see if Draft had released a statement about website maintenance, but I couldn’t find anything. My dad and I hoped they were busy trying to get the website back online, and they hadn’t decided to just delete the entire application. There was nothing we could do except keep refreshing the homepage every few hours.
Well, this story has a happy ending. Draft did eventually come back online later that day, and my dad was able to recover all of his work.
But this little incident reminded me of the importance of backing up your writing in multiple places.
Draft automatically backs up your documents online as you write so you don’t have to worry about your computer crashing and losing your work. I use Google Docs which has the same feature. However, as my dad’s story shows, sometimes that isn’t enough.
Your account on any application on the Internet (yes, even Google Docs or Medium) could get hacked or even be suspended. Additionally, there’s the risk of your Internet going out, and you being unable to access your work.
My dad decided to continue using Draft (he loves their distraction-free writing interface and how they track his daily word count), but he’s going to be extra careful about saving his work to his computer from now on as well.
So consider this post a friendly reminder to take several minutes today and make sure you’ve backed up your work in several different places too. One backup isn’t enough.
This means that if you write in Microsoft Word or in Scrivener, you could copy your work into Google Docs so you have it backed up online. And vice versa: If you write on an application like Draft or Google Docs or Medium, download your work to your computer.
Additionally, it’s always a good idea to have your computer files backed up on a disk or external hard drive. I have a My Book for Mac (affiliate link). It was a lifesaver when my laptop gave up the ghost last year. You can also use a Dropbox account to back up your work automatically in the cloud.
If you have a blog, make sure you’ve backed up all of your published posts. I have my entire website backed up through CodeGuard.
You could even go old school and print out your most important files.
Unfortunately, sometimes documents do accidentally get deleted despite all of our precautions. If you do lose your files, take a deep breath. It’s not the end of the world. Hey, it once even happened to Ernest Hemingway. You can read that story here. If he was able to take it in stride, so can we.
In the end, though, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. You should have at least two copies of your work stored in different places.
Have you ever lost all of your work? Share your story in the comments and let me know your tips for backing up your writing.
Adam Rodman says
Back in the early 1980s, my father, a film and television writer, got his first personal computer. It had 8″ floppy discs and crashed a lot. It was also vvvveeeerrrryyy slow. I showed him how to speed things up by creating a RAM disc from free memory. I warned him about making sure to back up to the floppies as often possible. But…
As was often the case, my father was late on a deadline. He was supposed to go away for the weekend with my mother and had spent the whole night working through the last thirty pages of the project. I was sipping coffee with my mother when I head a scream of agony and despair. “Don’t touch anything!” I told him as I rushed into his office. Everything was locked up, and try as I might, I couldn’t get it going again. He had to reboot, and lost everything.
From that horrible incident, I took a valuable lesson. I start every day’s work by saving to a new file, usually with the day’s date and year in the filename so that I can identify it quickly. I back up to two cloud series, and I have a local backup as well. I also email projects to myself so that they are easy to find just by logging in to google mail.
It’s been a very long time since I lost pages. I wish you all the same. As they used to say on HILL STREET BLUES, “Be careful out there.”
Nicole Bianchi says
Hi, Adam! Just saw your comment now. So terrible that your father lost all of his work. That’s always a terrible feeling. Your process for saving your work sounds great. Thanks for sharing!
Adam Rodman says
One of the gifts my father gave me was that he was late on deadlines. I mean L-A-T-E. He once turned in project 18 months late. Somehow, I found this pleasing. I figured that no matter how badly I screwed up, I would never be 18 months late. SO far, that has proved true!
Adam Rodman
-c- says
Wish I had read this last night! Thankfully, it was a short blog post that I could rewrite.
It’s a great reminder and I’ll start using Dropbox more. I have it synced to scrivener but I don’t use it very often.
Nicole Bianchi says
Sorry to hear that you lost your post, C! But glad you were able to rewrite it. Yes, Dropbox is great for backing up one’s work. Thanks for your comment. 🙂
Pooja V. says
Hello Nicole! Such an important and a helpful post! I cannot even imagine how horrible it might feel to lose one’s hard work in an instant. Thanks a ton for sharing.
Nicole Bianchi says
Hi, Pooja! 🙂 Thank you for your comment. Glad you found the post helpful.
Meg says
Hey, Nicole!
An awesome reminder indeed!!
Losing work has happened to me a number of times, but one of the first – and most frustrating examples – was in college when I was doing a course assignment. I had been working on it for over a month and my hard drive crashed!
Eventually we managed to restore some of the previous work versions of the project (not the final one), but I had to skip the exam, letting my teachers know of the incident, and I completed it next season. It was stressful indeed, and this is when I started backing up my projects on CDs and other external storage.
Additionally, I have lost work when forgetting to hit the Save button, pressing incidentally the Back button of a browser, having a power cut, and other odd examples.
But – yeah, this is all a part of the learning process and, as you say, if Hemingway was able to take it in stride, so can we. 😉
Thank you for the nice article!
Nicole Bianchi says
Hi, Meg! Thank you so much for your comment. 🙂 Oh, my! That sounds absolutely horrible about your hard drive crashing. I can’t imagine losing an entire course assignment — college is stressful as it is. Glad you were able to recover earlier drafts of your work.
Yes, those types of things have happened to me too. I once wrote up an entire blog post in WordPress and didn’t realize it wasn’t saving because my Internet had gone out. I’ll never do that again.
Thanks again for reading and sharing your story! 🙂
Nicholas says
Hi Nicole,
Great post. I had the same problem with draftin.com, but I can see how some people would favor Draft’s clean writing interface. Google docs though is probably the more reliable word processor. I usually save my final work on an external drive as well. Unless we get hit with an EMP attack, I think we’re ok with saving our current work on a couple of different applications.
Nicole Bianchi says
Thanks for your comment, Nicholas! Sorry to hear you had the same problem with Draft. Haha, yes, I do hope we’re never hit with an EMP. Then we’d have to return to the trusty pen and paper.