Terescia's thoughts and such.

Several years ago, Simon Haynes, author of the Hal Spacejock series, and creator of fabulous software for writers and readers including yWriter, declared November 3rd to be International Backup Day. Since I completely agree that I, like most people, never back up as often as I should, I decided I would promote the day as widely as possible.

It’s important to make regular backups. I’ve lost work, although never so much that I couldn’t recover gracefully, but I know people (and of people) who weren’t so lucky.

Make a backup of every book you’ve written and every book you’re working on. Back up your research. Back up your financial data.

Back it all up because the day will come when you’ll be thankful you have those backups!

As for me, I back up to DVD, Flash Drives, a partitioned drive, gmail, google docs, and my laptop. I always make sure to include my appdata so I get copies of my Outlook and Thunderbird email and other files it’s easy to forget about.

Do you do your backups?

I’ve been writing more articles lately, relative to fiction, and I’ve noticed a transition back to Microsoft Word. For all my website coding and page building, I continue to use NoteTab, and I adore EverNote for jotting notes and ideas, but for some reason I find myself scared to actually write in the program. Maybe I don’t fully trust its capabilities yet.

I write fiction exclusively in WriteWay Pro. It’s a good program that fits my needs in that area of writing.

Word, on the other hand, lets me write articles quickly. I don’t have to sacrifice time with the spell check because I keep the autocorrect turned on and the squiggly lines let me know when something I’ve spelled is questionable. The grammar check gives me notice that I might need to take a second look at a sentence or paragraph. I don’t always follow the advice it gives, but it helps eliminate work in the editing phase.

My point here is don’t let yourself get caught in a rut, using programs that aren’t the best programs for any given task. Each has strengths and weaknesses. Take advantage of them.

I’m taking a break. From what, you ask? From disorganization and disorder, from the inability to concentrate or focus on any one task long enough to make significant progress to get it done. I’ve discovered order.

Or maybe not. :-) But I have discovered EverNote, a free note-taking application that sparkles so brightly in my future that I feel like I’m in love. And I’ve been using it for exactly one day. :-o

I guess the reason I’m so enamored of this product is because it fits me so perfectly. I have stacks of single-subject notebooks floating around my house with notes upon notes upon notes, and I can never find the note I’m looking for when I really need it. I write everything down. I write on stickys, in tablets, in text files, on my calendar, in my to do lists, in binders, on the telephone book, everywhere, anywhere… This program was made for me.

It suits my writing and my personal life. It even fits well with my website development projects and business notes.

I’ll report back in a few days, weeks, months, and let you know how it goes.

And if you’re a writer who does lots of research, you should seriously consider giving this little powerhouse a try. I don’t think I’ve ever run across a program as well-suited to a writer’s research notes as EverNote.