Last night I bolted upright from a terrifying nightmare.
I nearly jumped out of my skin a few hours after midnight, bathed in a sweat. It was one of those evil lil’ dreams that shakes someone to the core. My apartment was on fire–my hundreds of signed books, framed paintings, furniture, and life going up in flames. It was the kind of nightmare that tortures one for hours afterward.
I was not panicked from losing my material items. I’ve never been one who puts a lot of stock in the things around me. It is one of the reasons I don’t have a couch in my apartment, as many of my writer friends can attest to. I try to be a bit more philosophical about life and life, to me at least, is about interaction with people and the world as a larger whole. Even losing my signed book library, while tragic, would ultimately be replaceable over time.
God must have a sense of humor, sending me the nightmare.
I wasn’t laughing.
Once I swung my legs out of bed and paced the dark apartment to settle my rattled nerves, I ventured back into the memory of the dream to discover why the hellfire it had manifested itself. Dreams and nightmares hold power because we fuel that power with our subconscious. Freud believed that a dream is an attempt by the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort. In short, if we are faced with a problem, while we sleep our brain tries to work it out.
Over the years while writing two books, I have had several instances of sitting up out of bed in the dead of the night, having just found the answer to a sticky plot problem.
Our minds possess a magic of their own, I guess.
The real fear that woke me last night did not have to do with a plot problem.
Instead, upon thinking it through for a while, the thing I was most fearful of losing while my apartment burned stemmed from losing all electronic copies of my own writing–my two books Song of the Fell Hammer and The Dark Thorn, my short story To Slay Anrhydedd, and all of the notes that went into them.
Losing my work from the last four years would break my heart.
Why did the dream manifest then?
Simple.
I realized with stunning clarity that I hadn’t backed up my work in almost two weeks.
That late at night, when normal people were sleeping dreams of their own, I turned on my desktop and my laptop, opened up the folders containing my work, and uploaded them to a private server account. I also copied the files to a thumb drive as well as emailed all chapters to one of my other email accounts–effectively double copying my work into two different places on two different servers.
The fact I had not backed up my work in two weeks evolved into a nightmare, delivered from my subconscious. My mind decided to tell me something.
I heeded it.
Let this be a tiny lesson to new writers out there.
Back up your work.
Trust your dreams.
You never know when it will pay off–and save heartache!
Yes! Good for you!
I have had that nightmare become real. Just last year my decrepit Win 98 machine blew and took every last scrap with it.
Now I have a thumb drive and copies are on gmail and other servers…..here and there.
Oh to never lose another word!
Good luck to you.
Dropbox, baby. It’s easy, simple, and automatic. And free, for the level I use it at. It’s really wonderful.
Thankfully, I’ve never had a dream like that and while losing my writing would be tragic, I have the blessings of friends who requested copies of my manuscript to edit and I now have two different copies floating out there with my friends Randy and Amie.
I can trust in my heart I wouldn’t lose my book. I have two memory sticks with versions of my book on them. One is in my purse(I would grab that in a fire) and the other is on my nightstand.
But my book is second to my mind, because I know I could rewrite it. I would be heartbroken if I lost my deceased son’s baby pictures and memory box. Only my daughter and those pictures are irreplacable along with the cat and Mom too, of course.
I would keep a copy of your work with a trusted friend.
Blessed Be.
Yvette, I too used email — emailed from Hotmail to my Yahoo account. Double save, automatically.
I’ll check it out later today.
Harry, that is a genius invention! I could use the Mac one but I have to pay for it. Having such a large free database to use is pretty awesome of Dropbox to do.
I have a few hard copies running around too, Rhiannon. That would definitely help, although the transcribing would break me. haha
Dropbox is a slick service, but if you’re looking for a web-based storage solution, there are a few good choices out there. I know this is something I was researching recently too, and here are some of them that I signed up to use:
MediaFire – Free accounts get unlimited storage and an upload cap of 200MB per file.
Box.net – Free accounts get 2 GB of free storage
Adrive.com – Free accounts get 50 GB of free storage.
All great options. I really enjoy MediaFire for everyday storage and use Adrive for larger files. Just in case anyone else out there is curious or looking.
Hey, great article. I’m a new writer in the game, only 17 actually, but I have big dreams. If you want to check out some of my work it’s called The Student Writer’s Mind at http://studentwritersmind.blogspot.com/. I just wanted to say that it’s always a thrilling experience reading what you put up next, because you tell the readers things that the other professional writers wouldn’t. I really do appreciate that.
after you have backed up your work and storaged it on server is your work safe.
but you self are not safe on nightmares.maybe next time you can have a nightmare about a global virusses like “skynet via terminator”
you see,your problem about the nightmare is not solved.
i dont know about Sigmund Freud but i suggest you immediately release your book or burn it at once as you are awake.
Kyle, I use Dropbox and Mozy.com. The Dropbox account is a free one, 2GB only. When I write something on my laptop, I save a copy to the Dropbox folder, and the service mirrors it on their site and automatically updates the file on my home desktop.
On the desktop, I have Mozy. For 5 bucks a month, it automatically saves all my writing, photos and family videos. So, the file gets put into the desktop dropbox, and then it’s copies onto a second offsite server at Mozy.
Plus, I have Time Machine.
I’m happy with my setup, since I’m only mildly technical. I’m also lazy, so I’m pleased everything happens without me having to remember to do it.
I remember hearing about Mozy once, had even looked into it. That sounds like a great set up, Harry!
And because I just can’t help myself when it comes to QAing things, I’m going to have to check out Dropbox now. Man, all these developers and their useful creations…
You shouldn’t just have stored copies of your books. You should also have copies of current contracts, etc.
I blogged on the subject of emergency preparedness for writers here:
http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/search/label/emergency%20planning%20for%20writers