File Backups and Writing on the Cloud

Image courtesy Comindware.

As a young writer, I was obsessed with portable word processing.  Being able to work on *.doc files while on the go was why I continued to use Palm OS devices long after their heyday, and why to this day I'm still fascinated by anachronistic devices like the sadly now-discontinued Alphasmart series.  But one of the main reasons these technological milestones of yesteryear are no longer around is because they've been rendered obsolete, like so many other devices that serve specific purposes, by the ubiquity of the do-everything smartphone.

If you have a smartphone, you can write, edit, and process documents with 99% of the functionality of the full-blown MS Office suite.  Even redlined edits and footnotes, long ignored by mobile document apps and the bane of editors and legal professionals everywhere, can be utilized by apps like Textmaker Mobile.  And if you pair that smartphone with cloud storage accounts like Dropbox (my personal favorite), Google Drive, OneDrive, or iCloud, you don't need to fumble with USB cables or worry about keeping up-to-date between desktop and mobile versions of your files.  Every time you save your changes, they'll be uploaded to every device linked to your cloud account.  You can spend your 30-minute train commute drafting a new scene on your phone, and that draft will be waiting for you on your computer when you get home.

All that being said, storing your writing on the cloud isn't foolproof.  If you accidentally delete a file, you might find it also deleted from every other linked device.  (There are steps to recover those files, but it's not always a sure thing.)  Sometimes the cloud service itself may make a mistake and delete your files by accident.  The bottom line is, relying solely on cloud storage is still putting all of your eggs in one basket, no matter how widely distributed that basket's contents may be.

So while your writing should be on the cloud - and is made incalculably easier to pass from smartphone to desktop to laptop and back again because of it - it shouldn't only be here.  As with all vital data, it should be backed up in more than one way.

The main backup I like to use is on removable media, like flash drives or USB-powered hard drives.  I use the free version of SyncBack to copy the contents of my Dropbox to removable media on a weekly basis.  I'd suggest that mission critical files be backed up on at least two redundant mediums, so that if one fails, there's still a backup available.

The final backup is one I use rarely, but is a great fail-safe for those who don't completely trust their work to electronic devices (and, so long as most digital storage media remain susceptible to strong magnetic fields, perhaps none of us should):  paper copies.  I try to avoid printing things out whenever possible, but for your most important pieces of work, keeping hard, physical copies ensure that, short of a cataclysm that divests you of nearly everything you possess, you'll never lose the fruits of your labor.  

How to Organize Your Story Notes: Should You Keep a Story Bible?

In some ways, organizing story notes has never been easier.  The old mainstays of pen and paper are available in innumerable forms, including regular sheets of paper, post-it notes, notecards, notebooks, steno pads, and journals.  A personal favorite of mine is a pocket-sized Moleskine (or Moleskine-style notebook), which is the perfect size for portability, usability, and cutting and pasting in snippets or printed sheets.

But as far as portability and ease of use goes, it's hard to top free cloud services like Google Keep - which essentially functions as an ever expanding wall of digital post-it notes.  Or if you prefer keeping a tighter rein on your digital files, organizing your doc or txt files in a Dropbox folder will make them accessible anywhere with an internet connection.  Bottom line is, if you carry a smartphone, you already have everything you need to keep as many or as few story notes as you want.

So the question becomes:  Should you?

The simple answer is that it depends.

At the very least, as a writer, you should have some record-keeping method on hand at all times just in case inspiration should strike.  A random story idea, a sudden moment of clarity regarding a particular difficult plot point, a unique insight - these vital notions are prone to effervescence like an elaborate dream upon waking.  Having Google Keep only a few taps away on your smartphone means that you can record these ideas within moments of their occurrence, but I'll admit to also carrying a low-tech contingency for the odd situations where batteries run out or internet connections fail: a Midori Memorandum card in my wallet, which is the size of a credit card and contains 31 tracing-paper-thin sheets:

And a PicoPen on my keychain:

That's about as unobtrusive a note taking setup as you can get, though writers with larger hands may find the PicoPen a little small, in which case a Fisher Space Pen may be an ideal if slightly less convenient upgrade.

I've taken random story notes while riding a train in Tokyo, walking the streets in Portland and flying high above the clouds over Hawaii.  Your brain is always working on problems even when your attention is elsewhere, so learning to be receptive to those sudden strikes of inspiration - and having the means to record those revelations while they're still coherent enough to be recollected - can save you hours of staring blankly at a blinking cursor, trying to reconstruct your thoughts after the fact.

Tools of the Trade: Sketchbooks

In my initial drafts, setting and description often take a back seat to character, action, and dialogue.  Milieu details, therefore, often occupy a prominent spot on my redrafting checklist.  Sometimes you can work out the placement of a scene in your head.  But sometimes the arrangement of a scene requires mapping out to get it just right.  That's where today's Tool of the Trade comes in:  the sketchbook.

Three of my favorite sketchbooks:  Two 9" x 12" Cansons and a B5  Deleter sketchbook mini.

The usefulness of a conducive piece of paper - sized according to your specific needs - comes into play especially when you're dealing with fantastic or sf elements that simply don't exist in the real world.  Case in point:  a short story I've been working on that takes place on an O'Neill-cylinder-style space station.  The climax, which once took place in a deserted industrial district - just like any you'd find on a planet - has moved to a observation "ring" that overlooks the cylinder's interior:

A bare-bones line sketch viewpoint shot of the observation "ring" - which  might eventually be fleshed out into concept art.

I found I couldn't wrap my head around the arrangement and logistics of the climax without drawing out some references first.  In more terrestrial situations, even an overhead two-dimensional map could go a long way to sorting out venues.  In Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card revealed that the entire premise of Hart's Hope came from a gate-dominated city map he doodled one day.

The more I've worked on my writing and drawing techniques, the more I've found that each sphere of creation resonates with one another; that lessons of technique from one strangely reinforce and point toward lessons in the other.  If nothing else, the deeper you delve into either craft, the more you realize you have left to learn.

Tools of the Trade: Hero 616 Fountain Pen

Fountain pens have been a lifelong obsession of mine since I first laid hands on a disposable Pilot Varsity over twenty years ago.  The one regret I had from the written portion of my bar exam several years ago was that I was forced to use a heavy-handed ballpoint to write out my answers.  How the examiners managed to decipher my chicken-scratch handwriting well enough to give me a pass remains a mystery to this day.  (Interestingly enough, the very next administration of the exam was the first to allow examinees to type out their essays on a computer loaded with ExamSoft.  Coincidence?  Who knows.)

I've used fountain pens whenever practicable ever since then.  (The usual impracticability occurring wherever carbonless copy paper is used, such as check writing and certain old-school governmental forms.  While a fountain pen could be used in those applications if you exert enough force, I have ballpoints in reserve to save my nibs - and hand - from the unnecessary torture.)   At one point my collection approached a dozen, but like the recent trend with my watch collecting, I've been putting into practice the principle "less is more."  So the Hero 616 is the first fountain pen I've added to the stable in well over two years.  A well-regarded Chinese-made Parker 51 doppelganger, it has several attractive attributes.

The first thing that makes the Hero 616 such an easy addition is its price.  It's readily available on eBay for somewhere between $4-6, shipping often included.  By comparison, the Lamy Safari - commonly regarded as a strong entry-level pen among European models - costs around $20.  The Hero 616 really won't break the bank, and offers solid performance that amounts to a high value-to-cost ratio.  Its affordability also means that you don't have to baby it the way you might a pricier pen costing several hundred (or more) dollars.

That last attribute is the main reason I picked one up:  I've been looking for a good home for my long-neglected bottle of Noodler's Baystate Blue ink.  Baystate Blue is notorious in FP circles for being finicky in use, staining barrels and even laying waste to pen feeds.  Needless to say, it's not the ink you'd want to use in a delicate vintage or exorbitantly priced pen.  So why bother with it at all?  Its vibrant shade of blue brooks no comparison.

The Hero 616 has a reputation as a solid platform for Baystate Blue, and my experience corroborates it.  I've had Baystate Blue clog up a Pilot Prera and Lamy 2000 in the past after only a day or two of disuse.  The Hero 616 is still going strong three weeks down the line.