As part of adjusting settings on this WordPress blog, I backed up what I’d already done with a plug-in widget. Hackers love attacking WordPress, so this was a wise move.

Feeling virtuous, I decided to check when I’d last saved my precious crime novel series to the cloud. I thought it was late last year, which is too long ago, considering the amount of work I’ve put in recently editing, formatting and designing book covers in preparation for self-publishing on KDP. I almost fell off my chair, when I saw that the last time I’d visited Microsoft’s OneDrive was in 2015! That meant I didn’t have copies of my last two novels.

Feeling like an idiot, I checked two memory sticks, finding early drafts of those books, but not any completed versions.

I should know better, for in 2006 my old laptop had its hard drive shattered into a hundred fragments when a lightning bolt hit the farm where I was living. It loosened huge stones in a barn wall before travelling 20 yards through the ground to my cottage. It blew two lightbulbs into pieces, as well as frying the surge protector extension lead powering my computer. I was lucky not to be electrocuted for I had the laptop on my lap at the time—my goolies could have been flash-fried—great balls of fire!

I lost 18 months of writing, research and many pictures of my cat Pushkin, who had recently died, so it was quite upsetting. That’s one of the problems with digital records, not only documents and photographs but stuff like music, where we transfer everything to our computer or iPod. If you don’t keep hard copies, you’ve lost everything.

I use OneDrive and Dropbox, but need to be conscientious about backing up my work. It only takes seconds to do and provides peace of mind.

https://www.lifewire.com/ways-to-back-up-your-data-2640426

How do you save your work?

When did you last do so?

Do it now!