Novel Writing: Backing Up Important Work

As a writer who writes every day, I go to great measures to ensure my work is safe.   I’ve described some of the online storage sites I use in a previous post.  Since then, I’ve discovered some more.

All the sites listed are free at a basic level, although users pay for extra features. Seems fair enough to me.  You can also store photographs and digital music files free of charge with some of the sites.

Here’s the list:

• SkyDrive – Windows Live (for Hotmail users)
• Google Docs (for Googlemail users)
• Zoho Docs ( for Zoho users)
• Inbox.com storage features
• filesanywhere.com
• Mediafire.com

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Backing Up Fiction And Music: Great Online Tools

I’m a chronic worrier.  One of the things I worry about most is losing all my writing, especially after the work I’ve put in.  Water dripping through the ceiling, a fire, a burglary…and the novels would be lost.  Worse, my printer isn’t working properly at the moment. 

Yet, with the Internet revolution of the last ten years and Web 2.0 sites, no one need ever worry about losing their work.  At the end of each writing session, I send the latest novel draft to several, if not all, of my six email accounts.  This keeps them safe.  Many email accounts can also store digital music files and photographs.  

Every week or so, I upload the novel in progress to Mediafire.com, a free online place for storing documents, photos and music.

I also take advantage of Google Docs and Zoho Docs, both free.  Google Docs limits the size of each file, but it’s possible to upload an entire novel by dividing it into smaller sections.

Finally, I create a new page of my WordPress blog, copy/paste the novel to the page and save the page as a draft that only I can see.

Admittedly, I still worry about losing my work at times, but the measures mentioned above should help.

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