How To Series: Backing Up Your Work

I'm not inventing the wheel here. I'm certainly not re-inventing it, either.

In this installment of my "How to Series," I'm focusing on a topic that should be near and dear to the heart of every writer.

Let's back things up, shall we?

You pour your heart and soul into your writing. It is a lovely, rewarding, frustrating, cursed, and wondrous thing.

So why not do everything in your power to make sure those words and images NEVER disappear?

Today, I'm writing about the importance of backing up your work...and keeping yourself protected.

I'm interested in tech. I love it. I'm not particularly good at techie things like rebuilding computers or taking a hydro-spanner to a stubborn hyperspace drive, but I do marvel at things that make life easier. I believe we should embrace these things.

At the same time, our wondrous technology sometimes fails us. The internet goes down; your hard drive goes supernova (or your PC simply dies). Pages and pages of writing, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of words lost.

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of words suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."

This happened to me once. My makeshift PC was the Millennium Falcon of computers. Sometimes, when starting up, it sounded like the Falcon's broken hyperdrive in The Empire Strikes Back. One day, it simply decided not to work. It would not power on.

My short stories and novels were trapped in the computer.



I was thankful that the hard drives still functioned; I was able to hook them up and extract the data. I was fortunate.

Now, I have backups. And backups for my backups.

Redundancy #1: Flash drives

These guys are my best friends. Actually, just the Cruzer there is my best friend. The other one belongs to my wife. Yeah, I know...they're predictable. I back up everything on my flash drive. Each and every short story and novel is on there, organized in different folders so I can find things easily. They're handy to have around and allow me to take my work from computer to computer.

They do have a couple of minuses, however. Flash drives can easily spread viruses...and because they're small, they can also be easy to misplace. Still, a very useful backup.

Redundancy #2: The Cloud

A few months ago, Dropbox sent the internet abuzz because of a change in its terms of service that some felt could surrender their own rights to their files (read about it here).

Dropbox is a big flash drive in the sky--a service that exists in the Cloud. You don't have to take it anywhere because it's already everywhere. Just register a username and password, download the program on your computer, and your files are instantly available. Dropbox has apps for iPhone and Android, so if you like to read on your phone, you can view your stuff there (also handy for transferring pictures in a pinch).

If Dropbox's terms of service have you hot and bothered, there are always other services like Google User Managed Storage, Microsoft Skydrive, SugarSync, and more (here's a good comparison on all of these from Gizmodo). I'm a big fan of Dropbox because it is very user friendly, but you may favor another option.

Just have another option, please!

Redundancy #3: Email

Before Dropbox, I often emailed my documents as attachments to myself. This is the most redundant of redundancies; I would store the file in my sent folder AND inbox. I've used Yahoo! Mail for years, so I tend to stick with it. A lot of people prefer Gmail, and I have no problem with that. Technically, I suppose this is also a "cloud" solution, but I thought it was worth mentioning. This "backup" doesn't always have the most up-to-date version of a story, but if everything else crashes, at least there will be something salvageable here.

Redundancy #4: The Kindle Imperative

A pleasant benefit of owning a Kindle is the ability to email stories to myself. I don't really enjoy sitting in front of a computer for hours while trying to read something I'm working on. Emailing it to my Kindle allows me to kick back on the couch or in a recliner to read my work. If something were to happen to the file on my hard drive, the Kindle can act as a USB so I can get the file back. This also has a double-layer of redundancy--since I emailed my document, there's a copy in my sent folder as well.

Redundancy #5: The Tried and True Hard Copy

Listen, I don't want to sit down and transcribe 400 pages of a manuscript that crashed and burned on my hard drive, email, flash drive, or cloud application. However, IF something were to take a death ray to those files, a hard copy is better than nothing. There are even some services that can scan your pages and turn them into a file you can edit. My point here is as follows: something is better than nothing when it comes to backing up your writing.

What about you? Do you have any special "tricks" to keep your files intact?

How to Series: Writing a Cover Letter

I'm introducing a new feature to the blog this week.

I've written several "how to" posts, so I thought I'd formalize these by unifying them under one umbrella.

And thus, the "How to Series" was born.

This isn't intended to be a weekly feature or even a monthly one; the "How to Series" exists simply to demonstrate how I approach an aspect of writing. I plan to cover a wide range of topics including simple things like formatting a manuscript, finding places for your work, using Twitter, submitting a piece, etc.

The inaugural edition will focus on something I needed help with when I was starting my writing career: writing a cover letter. This applies primarily to fiction short stories.

Let's say you have an awesome short story you'd like to "release into the wild." You have a specific market in mind, you read through the submission guidelines, and you see the publisher wants a cover letter.

When I sent off my very first short story, I didn't know what to put here. Did they want to know where I worked? Should I tell them I've been writing since sixth grade? Should I inform them I started taking writing seriously more than a year ago? Should this include a complete summary of my life and how I came to this point?

The answer to all of those questions is a resounding "NO."

The cover letter, honestly, is shockingly simple in most cases. I say "most cases" because I've sent a few short stories to places that DO want to know a little more about you. As an aside, please honor this Cardinal Rule: Read the submission guidelines. They differ from publication to publication, sometimes in small ways and other times in major ways.

Now back to the cover letter. It consists of four basic parts:

1. Salutation
2. Story title and word count
3. Publication history
4. Closing
Let's look at these point-by-point.

Salutation. This opens just like a business letter. If you personally know the editor in question, you're probably fine with starting the letter with "Dear Sam" and using a comma. If you know who the editor is, but don't know him/her personally, go with "Dear Mr. Smith" and use a colon (like you would on a business letter). If you don't know who the editor is, go with something a little more generic, such as "Dear Editors" (with a colon) or "Dear [Publication Name]" (where publication name is the title of the magazine/journal you're submitting to; also use a colon in this case).

Use the third option (Dear Editors/Dear [Publication Name]) as a last resort. In many cases, the publication will list the editor's name in the submission guidelines. If it's not there, spend a few minutes on Google to see if you can figure out the editor's name. Also, if you're not sure if the editor is a man or woman (let's say the editor is listed as D.J. Davis, which could be either a man or a woman), a Google search should help you find out that information.

Story title and word count. The first line of your cover letter should be concise and to the point. Simply mention the title of your story and the approximate word count.

I'm submitting my short story "Terror in the Deli" for consideration in [Publication Name]. It runs approximately 4,000 words.

Seriously. That's it. That's all the information you need to put in the first line. You don't need to summarize the story or gush about what makes it special. Doing so is the sign of a newbie, and with the number of submissions editors get, that's the last thing you want.

CAVEAT: Some publications WILL ask for a summary of your story. If that's the case, it will be explicitly stated in the submission guidelines. Otherwise, stick with the approach above.

Publication history. Again, keep this section brief. If you've had 20 short stories published, don't list each and every one. If you haven't had a single story published, leave this line out. The editor will get the implication.

My short stories have appeared in Wordsmith Weekly, ABC Press, and Kiss a Wookie Monthly. My novel Walk Like an Egyptian is published by Excellent Books.

The key here is giving the editor enough information to know you take your writing seriously...and that others have as well. Just don't overdo it.

Closing. In the last line of your letter, thank the editor for his/her time and consideration. After that, close your letter and "sign" it. Use "sincerely" or "regards" or something like that. I usually reiterate my email address and sometimes include the URL for my blog under my name.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Matt Adams
[email address]
[blog address]

Now we have all the parts of our cover letter--the salutation, story title and word count, publication history, and closing--let's look at the whole thing. Your email should look something like this:

Dear Mr. Davis:

I'm submitting my short story "Terror in the Deli" for consideration in [Publication Name]. It runs approximately 4,000 words.

My short stories have appeared in Wordsmith Weekly, ABC Press, and Kiss a Wookie Monthly. My novel Walk Like an Egyptian is published by Excellent Books.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Matt Adams
[email address]

That's fewer than 60 words for the whole cover letter.

The best policy for these cover letters is to keep it simple. Be polite, respectful, and professional. Spell-check it just like you would your short story. Some editors may not ever read your cover letter--they may skip straight to your story--but the ones who do will appreciate your brevity and professionalism.