Blogs by Flo Fitzpatrick
How I Spent Spring Break (A Cautionary Tale)
3/16/2011 6:50:35 PM
Back up your work through email. It's forever!
My Spring Break was last week. Instead of spending that break doing the normal things that one does during a spring holiday such as shopping, basking in the breezes at a warm beach in South Texas, or hitting all the movies in town that were up for Academy Awards and can now be seen cheaper, I created a new disease. I call it Font Blindness Brain Drain.
Let me explain. A few days before Spring Break hit, I unearthed the hard copy of a manuscript I wrote about seven years ago. Note - hard copy. I thought I'd saved the book in the super-cheap style that I always employ for my work - send it as an email attachment to one or more of my various email addresses, then as extra added protection, sending an email attachment to my best friend. I do this because I made the discovery some years ago that email is forever. The "how" of that discovery happened when my old computer died and, after the Apple Tech guys buried it in peace and I got a new one, I found that all my emails entries still existed! I don't understand this phenomena and I tell my students to never write anything in an email they don't want read three hundred years from now, but the good news is - if your computer dies, you don't necessarily lose everything.
Back to Font Blindness Brain Drain. Repeating - I found the hard copy that I thought had been misplaced in one of the various moves I've made over the last five years. (No notes, just the manuscript. And no email attachment to anyone.) Being a frugal writer, I'd been smart and printed out that manuscript in single space, 9 point font, thus saving both ink and paper. What it did not save were my eyes. I spent Spring Break typing that manuscript into my computer. 162 pages of single-spaced 9 point font. I was almost glad I'd never finished that book because I don't think I could have taken another day staring at those hard-copy pages as the tiny words blurred into one another. This, folks, is what I now call Font Blindness Brain Drain.
But I did it. Then I even got creative and added four new chapters - on the computer. (I'm not going near a printer until I calm down.) I have about three chapters to go before first draft is finished and since I'm not the world's greatest multi-tasker and I have two dances to finish choreographing for my 'kids' and one play to put up for my Theatre class in April, I'm looking at Easter Break to pull those last chapters together. (And even though I'm a 'seat of the pants' writer, I do have an idea of what happens - killer is revealed! Killer is caught! Hero/heroine get together!)
There is a moral to how I spent my Spring Break. ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR WORK SOMEWAY OTHER THAN YOUR COMPUTER THAT IS STILL ELECTRONIC. For me, it's email. No confusing equipment to buy and decipher. Just attach and send it to yourself and eight years later, who knows? You might have a brand new book ready to send out into the world - and your eyesight won't have deteriorated so much in a week you need glasses and a heck of a lot of Visine.
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