Comments on: 5 Rules to Keep Writers Sane on Their Creative Journey

By: Jenny Hansen

Jenny Hansen — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 04:48:27 +0000

In reply to denise. That's so heartbreaking, Denise. To have that happen after the editing stage is just brutal.

By: denise

denise — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 04:30:52 +0000

My hard drive crashed and I had not backed up the MS I had made a lot of changes to. It was irretrievable. Lesson learned,

By: James R. Preston

James R. Preston — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 22:19:30 +0000

In reply to Jenny Hansen. Right, Jenny. Stressful on at least two counts. One, the obvious: my files! Where are my poor files? Two, and this one really makes me nuts, all the time I'm spending recovering files I'm not writing and to make matters worse, going through files generates one idea after another which I can't act on until I've solved the file problem. Arrrrgh! Ok, I feel better. That's my rant for now. Thanks!

By: James R. Preston

James R. Preston — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 22:15:29 +0000

In reply to Lisa Norman. Oh, Lisa so, so right. Do it once and you will remember. My last time I honestly can say was not entirely my fault -- my publisher passed away very suddenly. We're still sorting it out. I have electronic copies, but are they the most recent? Probably. Is probably good enough? Well . . . Stay tuned. Thank you so much for sharing.

By: Jenny Hansen

Jenny Hansen — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 20:15:40 +0000

I've had to recover two different hard drives, so now all is saved in the cloud. And on thumb drives, in Scrivener, and with a great naming scheme. As a writer, it's just too stressful to lose files.

By: Jenny Hansen

Jenny Hansen — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 20:14:12 +0000

In reply to Nancy Lee Badger. Oh yeah, the year is KEY!

By: Lisa Norman

Lisa Norman — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 19:52:32 +0000

James - I love this. Having once lost a file due to a computer glitch... this was back in the dark ages when a floppy WAS the entire book, I needed to translate from PC format to Mac. Had a professional company do it for me because in the middle of a wedding and moving and all, I was stressed. Was leaving on my honeymoon, and coming back to finish and send the book to big-name-agent. Came back, sat down at the new computer, plopped in the disk, only to find it hopelessly scrambled. Old files had been helpfully destroyed by the company that did the translation. I had a printed copy, but this was before scanners, and...yeah. That never happened.

I'm a big believer in everything being backed up both locally and in the cloud. I've had many computer crashes since then, but that was the last novel I ever lost.

Do it once, you will remember...

By: James R. Preston

James R. Preston — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 18:54:37 +0000

In reply to Diana Stout. Wow. Diana, in all my years of writing for WITS, I've never said this: you don't need my essay. You are on top of it. you are so on top of it you're a perfect example of what we used to teach at FileNet. Thank you so much for an outstanding contribution to this blog.

By: Diana Stout

Diana Stout — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 18:02:40 +0000

Drafts are saved via "DRAFT title 12-4-25" and if it's a 2nd draft that day, "DRAFT title 12-4-25 v2." Other files could be DETAILS title date, RESEARCH title date, etc. Once I no longer need or have multiple drafts, details, etc., the older ones go into an ARCHIVE file folder in that file. When finished, the file becomes "FINAL title date" and when submitted that info is included: "FINAL title date submitted to Amazon date." This way, I know which version of the final draft was used and where submitted. My goal is to end up with everything in the archives except the most recent submissions and the latest final draft. FINAL indicates that it's been edited and is ready to go. Once published, I can go into the archives and delete a lot of the earlier drafts and files. I have automatic cloud backup, an automatic external drive backup, and on the first of each month, I manually backup my entire disk drive to a separate external hard drive. Overkill? Maybe. I've learned the automatics aren't always faithful, plus I don't trust cloud.

By: James R. Preston

James R. Preston — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 17:40:58 +0000

In reply to Debbie Vilardi. Oh, Debbie, I feel your pain! What a disaster! I know what you mean about thinking a version is final and then finding out it's not. I'm glad you're on top of it now. Thanks for contributing. I think your story will motivate fellow writers. And I'm glad you didn't divorce your husband.