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We all have writing insecurities, but this is one is an easy fix: Make sure you’re protecting your work and your computer from theft, damage, and failure.

Recently a friend of mine was writing at a coffee shop, and she stepped away from her bag briefly — but this was just long enough for a sneaky thief to grab it and disappear. She lost her wallet, keys, and her laptop, but the worst thing she lost – the most irreplaceable thing – was her work in progress. Her latest changes hadn’t been backed up, and she was on deadline. A writer’s worst nightmare!

Now imagine going to a writing workshop for six weeks and losing your laptop – the thing you need for writing. This happened to four students at the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2008, when thieves broke into the house and made off with several laptops.

Happily, in both of these cases, the amazing online community raised money to replace the stolen computers in a weekend. As writers, we know how important computers are to our work, and in many cases to our livelihood. And as readers, we want our favorite writers to keep producing stories.

Even if you write by hand in a notebook or use a typewriter (really?), chances are that at some point you need a computer. Computers are tools for drafting, editing, revising, e-mailing agents and editors, playing Portal, posting on Twitter, and more. So why do so many people fail to secure them? Some just don’t think about it, or figure they’ll never have to worry about it, but laptop security also seems like it might be annoying to set up or expensive. It doesn’t have to be.

Here are some very basic things you can do to make your laptops a little more secure, and especially avoid losing your work.

1. Back up your work! Everyone knows this is important but too many still don’t bother. Make sure you have copies of your work, preferably in multiple places. If you write a lot away from home, bring a USB thumb drive or an SD card and make a backup every time you finish a writing session. You could also sync your work to a cloud storage account like Dropbox, if you can get online. Scrivener and Dropbox work pretty well together to share your projects with multiple computers and save backup files. Even if you lose your laptop, at least you won’t lose the latest draft of your novel.
2. Make it easy for people to contact you if they find your device. I left my tablet on a train once, but I had saved my contact info on the home screen, and the right person found it and called me. You can (and should) do this with your smart phone too. It’s trickier with a laptop; I usually just tape my business card to the bottom of it. I’ve also set up a guest account so if anyone logs in to it, they’ll see custom Windows wallpaper with my contact information (above).
3. While you’re at it, make sure it’s password-protected. Your devices should have passwords on them to prevent (or make it harder) for unauthorized people to access your files – and erase them and claim your computer as their own. In addition to the boot password, PCs and Macs allow you to add a BIOS password so other users can’t easily get around your regular password or wipe the system. If you want to go all out, you could also encrypt your hard drive…
4. Make your laptop harder to steal. For some laptops, you can still buy those security cables to attach them to a table or something (or you could just not leave your laptop lying around unattended.) There’s also a product called the STOP Security Plate – a nigh-impossible-to-remove, highly visible plate stuck onto your laptop that announces it as stolen. This makes it difficult to resell and serves as a way to register your laptop so it can be identified easily. In theory, a thief that sees this — or a bunch of stickers that make your computer look unique — won’t bother to take your laptop in the first place. (Full disclosure: I haven’t gotten mine yet, because I don’t want to stick it to my pretty new laptop.)
5. Install tracking software. You’ve heard the stories about people tracking down the thief who took their laptop using GPS coordinates and the webcam. It really happens! But the confrontation is probably best left to police. Still, you can help them find your laptop with tracking software hidden on your computer. Macs have Undercover, but you can also install LoJack or Prey (which includes a free version) to track and remotely lock or wipe PCs or Macs. If you do this, you may also want to set up an unlocked guest account to entice the thief to log in so the laptop can connect to a Wi-Fi network.

These are just some of the precautions you can take. Of course none of them are foolproof, but some security is better than none, and at least you have a better chance of recovering your laptop and not losing any work.

Does all this seem paranoid or do you think it’s a good idea? What other security measures do you take to protect your laptop and work? Comment below!

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Yes. Another Backup Lecture. | 43 Folders:

Merlin Mann walks through his redundant, automated back-up solution. If you’re reading this blog there’s a good chance you’re a working illustrator, which means you have plenty of files that are important to you — and important to your clients.

I use a combination of Apple’s Time Machine and Dropbox, but I know even that’s not enough to cover my butt in the long run. Are you backing up your work? And are you confident in your backup solution? From the linked article:

1. If it’s not automated, it’s not a real backup.
2. If it’s not redundant, it’s not a real backup.
3. If it’s not regularly rotated off-site, it’s not a real backup.

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 Don't leave the safety of your files to chance!

Today I want to share a great backup tool with you.

Dropbox

I recently subscribed to Dropbox. I opted for their free 2 GB of online data storage – so far I’m using almost 39% of my allowed space. I have to say I really love it.

I do my work each day, and when I’m done, I just copy the files to my dropbox files (right on my computer). You have no idea how relieved I feel knowing that my clients’ work is backed up.

In addition, I’m backing up all my manuscripts, articles, and posts.

What I especially like about Dropbox is that I save only the files I want to. I was a little concerned about having my entire hard drive backed up online because of personal information that is on some files. But, now I don’t have to worry about it.

And, what’s just as beneficial is that you can register your laptop, and other computers to your Dropbox account. This means once you save a file to the computer or laptop you’re currently working on, the updated file will be available on every other computer you listed on your account. Now, that’s impressive and makes life just a bit easier.

Since I think it’s such a worthwhile tool for backing up important files, and the 2 GB storage space is FREE, I’m promoting it.

Once you join, for every person you get to join up, you’ll get an additional 250 MG of space (up to 8 GB)

If you think it’ll be beneficial to your writing and work, give it a try - there’s absolutely nothing to lose. And, I would never blatantly recommend a product I didn’t use and didn’t think is great.

So, click on Dropbox or the link below and see for yourself.
http://db.tt/CChVLiZ

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There is no point crying over spilt milk right? Then what about crying over weeks and weeks of lost work???

Last week I had decided to finish off and launch a few projects I had spent quite some time on this year. One was an art e-book on Safety for artists, another art book on Artists Pitfalls and how to avoid them and also a whole lot of art teaching material complete with an art teaching web site ready to launch.

Unfortunately a few months back I had difficulty installing and updating my software and I had to save all my documents onto a borrowed external hard drive and reformat my PC. I did this and thought I had transferred everything back BUT not all of it did! Maybe I hit the ’17 hour day/2am and I am tired’ button. Thank goodness I back up my client’s graphics and web sites more than one way.

I am only now discovering what was lost and you guessed it…quite a bit! Oh the hours I spent on those art books! I have searched through all my backup discs and most of my hard copies. I found one other art e-book in hard copy I thought I had lost. At least I can re-type that book but as for the rest; I am still hoping my other art books and art teaching material will magically appear. I have been a brave girl and no tears shed, but as the character Homer Simpson says ‘DOH!”

So for all the people waiting for the first e-book I promised (Artist’s Pitfalls) I apologise.

And what now?

I do have other great material and I will get this moving as quickly as I can.
You can also look forward to an interesting newsletter this month (That is if you have signed up for it!)
I also have some great news to post later this week that will interest any artist wanting to promote their work to a wider audience and make extra income as well. I am very excited about it too as you will be once I tell you so don’t miss that post!

If you are like me and keeping track of things needs to be easy then sign up for my RSS feeds to be notified of my posts as they happen. You don’t want to miss out do you? :-)

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