Back It Up! A Good Habit For Authors
Methods for backing up your novel
When I first started writing, my instrument of choice was a heavy Selectric typewriter. It rested on my family’s formal dining room table. Every day after school, I would cloister myself in the dining room. A novel featuring Tolkienesque dwarves, elves, and heroines took shape via the clicky keyboard. Stacks of white paper and bottles of white-out accompanied me on the table. Each finished page of the book would rest in a box, face down, to keep the pages in numerical order. I worked on the book for two years.
It was a time before home computers were commonplace, or the world wide web even existed. I was a teenager with the desire to write, creating my story in isolation on a broken typewriter without the aid of a carriage return. I knew little of the publishing world or the details of being a professional author.
When I completed my youthful “masterpiece,” I made the mistake of sending the only original copy of my novel to Ace Publishing. They were a well-regarded fantasy publisher of the day, and I had an extensive collection of Ace novels on my bookshelf. It was my dream to be one of their authors. Not only had I not made a copy for my records, but I sent in a rough draft with no editing to the publisher!