Where do you keep what you write?

[randi.lee]

Hard drive, external hard drive, Cloud, and a good old fashioned file cabinet!

 

[scribofelidae]

I use two separate Macs regularly when writing -- the desktop and a laptop. Since I use Scrivener, I keep the 'live' files in Dropbox and open the files directly from there with whatever computer I am using. Then, I have Scrivener set up to locally back up when the file is opened, saved and closed. And, irregularly, I will email documents to my Gmail account.

(I lost the first 18K to a novel once. NEVER AGAIN. Now I'm lousy with backups and multiple versions.)

Print outs only happen for stuff that I'm actively working on that has gotten to the second draft stage, but I should probably be more consistent.

 

[Riley]

Up my--erm. . . .well.

Hard drive. You'd think with the hundreds upon thousands of words I've lost over the years I'd use something else, but nooooope. My work isn't quite as precious to me as it used to be.

 

[princessmiwi]

Dropbox, which syncs to my notebook and to my ipad, so there are always at least 3 places where I can find my things. I usually end up emailing them too, when I finish a first draft.

edit: I don't this anymore, but I used to print my stories, which I filed in a neat folder that I used to show my work to some friends

 

[kkbe]

In the front right pocket of my favorite jeans, wrapped around an ancient stick of Juicy Fruit.

 

[DeleyanLee]

The present MIP is on the desktop, where I can find it easily (and to remind me to write instead of playing a game). A writer friend and I exchange MIPs on a semi-regular basis as a back-up.

Notes on future MIPs are a mix between handwritten in a notebook with the appropriate book title and a file in "My Writing" on the desktop, and a folder in "Favorites" of helpful/inspiring sites I've found along the way.

Finished books are printed out (double-sided) and the book with its history is put on a CD, which is then stored in the binder with the print-out. I delete all that stuff from the writing computer.

I once took a desktop computer in to get fixed. I had 20 years of writing on a secondary HDD. The idjit tech erased and reformatted BOTH drives, so the data was irretrievable. Also had a house fire that trashed all computers and external storage devices--though all the hard copies survived. I've come to be not so attached to words I've written since I know I can always write them again if I have to. *shrug*

 

[Merrit]

A few months ago I would have told you that I kept it all on my hard drive. Then my computer crashed and I lost everything. I now keep everything on a jump drive, in my email, and in a hard copy format. I would rather be safe. Oh and I have some in my drop box and hidden in a private blog online.

 

[flapperphilosopher]

I am a hard-drive and Mozy person too. As a teenager I did all my writing by hand, though, so I have stacks of paper in boxes in my parent's house too... I feel I should get rid of some of it, but I can't.

 

[ChristinaLayton]

I'm going to suggest a re-writable CD-RW for those without internet and wanting another alternative. The reasoning is that they're cheap, and if you keep it in a case it may be safer than a flash drive in some instances. i.e. it can't get corrupted.

I used to save all my work on a CD-RW, and I thought they were like flash drives (this was back in 2007) so what I would do was to open the document, make changes to it and then save. I was then told that's why my files kept getting damaged, because every time you make changes to your MS you have to save the new version on the CD-RW as a brand-new file. Meaning if you only do 500-1000 words a day, on an 80,000 word manuscript, you could end up with 80 different versions of the same document. I wouldn't recommend it at all. For those that have no internet, external hard drives are the best option.

 

[stormie]

Way back to what seems like the dawn of time, I kept all of my writings as hardcopy in an expanding manilla folder. Then two folders, then three.... As time went on and there were more choices, like floppies, then CDs, then DVDs, then USBs, then Dropbox (which I love).

One day, long after I stopped saving my work on paper, I opened those manilla folders. Low and behold, tiny holes peppered the pages. I threw everything out that I had already saved in Dropbox and a thumbdrive. The rest I copied onto my computer.

 

[Snowstorm]

I keep my writing is several places.

My hard drive in a "Writing" folder or peeled out in a folder for my publisher's name.

If I print out my novels for a different method of editing, they're kept in a boxes in individual folders. (I don't ever throw them away in case of an IRS audit. Don't know if I have to keep them, but I do to show that I'm actively working on writing.) If I print out writing that's only one to several sheets, I have a "writing" folder in my cabinet.

I keep backups on two thumb drives, plus I email the files of any daily edits of novels to three email accounts.

 

[Jamesaritchie]

I keep everything in a main folder with sub-folders inside. This is on my hard drive, or an external hard drive, and on a pair of DVDs. I also back up to Google Drive, and to SkyDrive. At the end of each writing day, I just move the main folder to the external hard drive and the DVDs, rewriting the folder that's already there. Only takes a couple of minutes this way, and everythng is safe.

I only use thumb drives for convenient transfer when I'm traveling. I've seen thumb drives fail too often to trust them.

 

[NottiThistledore]

On my hard drive, backed up to Dropbox (you can set Scrivener to do this automatically every time you close a file) and backed up to an external hard drive. My husband's a software developer and insists on multiple backups!

 

[cmi0616]

On my laptop's harddrive (if that's where the documents go when you hit save) and backed up on one of those plug-in back-up thingy's. As you can see, I'm super tech savy.

 

[Linda Adams]

On my hard drive, with an online backup. My research notes and book diary are in Evernote. I try to do as little paper as possible because I don't really have the storage room for it.

 

[Torill]

I write my ms directly in Google Drive, and transfer the finished chapters to a word document on my harddisk as I go. Which I print out occasionally, just to be sure. And once in a while I will transfer said document to an external harddisk, too.

The reason I write in Google, is that everything is automatically saved every few seconds, and I can go back and look at my 'revision history' and see what the document looked like five days ago, or five months ago, or three years ago for that matter. Nothing is ever lost. Also, I can write everywhere I am, as long as there is a computer with an internet connection available, which suits me fine - I move around a lot, plus have had my laptop crash more than once (or someone else in my household has grabbed it already!).

 

[ElsaM]

After my laptop was stolen I lost a few things that I hadn't put in my email account because I'm a terrible, lazy person who doesn't back up regularly. Now I automatically save everything to dropbox.

I am happy to serve as a lesson to others!

 

[davidh219]

Similar to many other posters I have a writing folder that's synced to dropbox. Directly in the folder is the stuff I'm working on. Other stuff sits in one of three sub-folders, "Abandoned or Shelved", "Finished-ish", and "Non-Fiction"

I also write in notebooks quite a bit. I have a little field notes (google it) notebook that I carry everywhere. I also have a freewriting composition book, and another composition book for one of the two novels I'm first-drafting right now. Neither have been transcribed into a word document or anything, so losing them would be pretty devastating, but I also never take then out of the house, so I'm not that worried. As for why I'm writing one novel in a notebook and another on the computer? No clue. I don't make sense, is what I'm realizing.

 

[Anna Spargo-Ryan]

I use two separate Macs regularly when writing -- the desktop and a laptop. Since I use Scrivener, I keep the 'live' files in Dropbox and open the files directly from there with whatever computer I am using. Then, I have Scrivener set up to locally back up when the file is opened, saved and closed. And, irregularly, I will email documents to my Gmail account.

This is literally exactly what I do.

 

[Sheluvspink]

In various word docs, and I email copies to myself if my comp ever crashes. I need to get more organized about that. I'm getting a mac soon so I'm putting it off until then.

 

[scribofelidae]

This is literally exactly what I do.

The only caveat I'll offer on this system is that, as I've learned the hard way, it's important to open the document from Dropbox itself or on a short cut you've made on your respective computer instead of just launching Scrivener.

My system was working flawlessly when I was where the wifi was good. But there was a local drop-in writing group in the bowels of the local library where the wifi wasn't so good and Dropbox took some time to sync on my laptop, sometimes a couple of minutes or more.

Not realizing this, I opened the novel by opening Scrivener, and it would have no choice but to pull up the last version it had, the previous version missing anything new that I'd written. Cue the panic! And then Dropbox would finish syncing (very crap wifi) and I would try to hurriedly shut down the file and re-open … which would then save the older version over the actual current version. It took me a few accidents to figure out what was going on, but once I figured it out and changed how I opened the files, it has been smooth sailing. (And of course, what I had 'lost' was still seeded through the automatic backups on the desktop back home. Just took some unzipping.)

If I lose something now, after all that, I consider it a sign and wash my hands of it.

 

[Writelock]

Published stuff goes in a box underneath the bed. Virtual works are in a folder hidden in my lesson plan folder.

 

[DancingMaenid]

I have a few folders on my hard drive. I try to keep my writing organized, so I have a folder for short stories and one for nonfiction, for example. I regularly back stuff up on a flash drive, and a lot of my stuff is backed up online.

 

[JustinlDew]

Dropbox.
Skydrive
My home file server and my computer(s).
I figure if I can't ever access any of them then the world will have ended so I'm not going to need to worry about it.

 

[Knigel]

I use Dropbox and then Google Docs for sharing my work to be edited. Now I at least have one back up and one near backup. My laptop was just bricked, so I'm so lucky I have this so I can keep working and not freak out that I lost my stuff.