Trying to unwind after this really crappy week with shiny, escapist fantasy.
Last night we watched seven of the nine Animatrix shorts. The Last Voyage of the Osiris really blew us away. It was made by the same people who did the Final Fantasy movie and you can really tell. And we also watched The Matrix on DVD on the big 60-inch upstairs. That’s one movie that a smaller screen just does not do justice to. Today, we’re going to see The Matrix: Reloaded. I’ve been trying assiduously to avoid any spoilers. Excited movie goodness.
On the writing front, I haven’t been doing any all week (fuckity fuckity fuck). I have been continuing my run of rejections, though, amassing five more in just this week, adding to the suckitude. The hard-drive issue freaked me out too much to focus on writing, and I’ve been spending my writing time compulsively going through my backups to see if there were any gaps in the files I had left. They look okay so far. Glad I’ve been anal about backing up those, although now I feel that having a copy on our desktop’s hard-drive and monthly backups on CD-RW aren’t sufficient. I’m debating between burning a monthly CD-R in addition (and just keeping an ever-growing pile of monthly CDs) or burning to a Zip Disc. But we’re a little low on Zip Discs.
I keep wondering if I should make hard-copy backups, but I just don’t have a place to store all those pages and pages of manuscripts. Not to mention every time I make a tweak to a story I’d have to print it out again. The last time I tried to keep hard-copy backups, I lost track of what stack of paper was the most current pretty quickly.
I need a neural implant storage device so I can backup all my files digitally to my brain.
Yeah, I’ve had those 5 rejections in a week weeks. They do suck. It’ll get better, it has to! Promise.
Like the CD-R monthly backup idea. It takes up less space and is cheaper (and probably more environmentally friendly) than having paper backups.
Thanks. A new week has provided me with a better outlook. Hope the world transpires to make sure it stays better!
For what it’s worth, I consider going through old work to make sure nothing’s wrong with it to be working. It may not be producing new stuff, but it’s necessary now and again. Don’t feel too bad.
As far as backing stuff up, here’s what I do…
Every time I begin a new project, I select a 3.5 disk. It doesn’t have to be a new one; it can be one I used for an old project as long as there’s room for the new one too. Then, when I’ve finished my writing, I back up the file to the floppy. Every day. No exceptions. Often more than once in a single day, if I go back later and tweak what I wrote that day. Thus, there’s never any gap, and the worst that can happen is I lose one day’s worth of work if the computer dies toward the end of a writing session, before I have the chance to back it up.
I don’t do monthly CD-ROM backups, but I do save the CDs I burn when restoring the entire system every six or eight months.
Yep, I do daily backups too. Before my laptop bit it, I kept my work backed up between it and our desktop machine every day, in addition to the monthly CD-RW burn. Now that I’m stuck with only the desktop, I’ve taken to making copies against the slave hard drive that we installed several months back.
“I do save the CDs I burn when restoring the entire system every six or eight months“
Glah! You reload your entire system every six or eight months??
5 rejections? Owwwwwww! I hope Reloaded helped ease your pain.
It did! It’s amazing how recharged I feel after the weekend. Whew.
Five in a week! Ouch!
[pat, pat] At least you had five things in circulation, that’s to the good.
Thanks. Although right now I’m wishing I had fewer things in circulation ’cause that would mean something else would have sold! Heh.