An important lesson learned...

I've been going great guns with editing Haven, but when we had a power surge at home I leant a very, very valuable lesson - The importance of backing up files...

I had done over a hundred pages of rewrites (and I did save it like a good little girl) and when the power went off, so did the computer... okay, all I had to do was reset the computer if I saved it, didn't I? It's not as simple as that.

When I went to turn the computer on, it refused to load. I even tried putting it in safety mode just so I could get the novel off the damn machine. But, it refused to load. So after swearing a few times and my brother trying to calm me down before I really put the thing in an early grave, it decided to start - a whole 20 minutes after pressing the power button for the fifth time.

The first thing I did was to email me the file (after checking that it was still operational... it was). I always force myself to save at regular intervals, but after this mornings ordeal, I'm going to have roughly three backups (or wherever I can manage to save it) so I always have a copy of it... the only problem is, and I have done this before, working off an old file and realising after another 100 pages of rewrites.

So, where do people back up their files and how many backups do you have? Or, are some like me and stressout when the only machine with a copy crashes?

But for me, this little ordeal has taught me that backing up files is a good habit to get into.