I've been involved with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective for over a year now. I've written numerous poems, short stories, and fragments for the group, and I have quite a bit of writing that was done before I met them. Most of these stories and poems are scattered in files throughout my hard drive and printouts here and there.
Two immediate concerns come to mind when it comes to writing: how do I make sure I can't lose it, and how can I find it when I need it? I've had an answer to both of these questions for a while, and I've been offering it as a suggestion to other people: Put all your stories and poems in a blog created just for your writing. This way, even if you lose your home computer, laptop, or story discs, your writing is still safely stored in the cloud. (Well, not exactly safely, but we'll get to that shortly.) And you don't need to lug your writing anywhere as long as you can access your blog. Index it properly, and you'll be able to find your stories and poems quickly!
One problem comes to mind: What if you don't want to share your writing just yet? Or at all? What if these are stories you'd like to submit for publication someday, and don't want to see floating around the internet? That's easily fixed: lots of blogging platforms offer a wide array of privacy options, from a blog opened to invited readers only to a blog only accessible by the blog author. For now, that's the setting I have on my new blog.
Which presents another problem: backing up. Most blogging platforms have some mechanism built in to allow the blog author to back up the blog, and most blogs are automatically archived in one way or another. But not if the blog is set to private, with only the blog author able to see the posts, then the author must back up manually.
That's an inconvenience I'm willing to accept, for the moment. I'll gradually be posting all of my poems, stories, and fragments to this new blog, one which only I can see. In the future, I may add some readers.But for now, it will just be me!
The narcissistic primarily autobiographical blog of the pseudonymous d.b. echo
Consider a cloud storage solution that has nothing to do with a blog - there are several no cost options. Google Drive, Dropbox and Box.net are 3 very good options and offer 5GB free. You can create folders and organize to your hearts content. For your purposes, I recommend Google Drive, you can create the documents online, store them and they are searchable. Dropbox and Box offer storage/search only. These options are practical and offer superior management options to any blog solution.
ReplyDeleteI'd really have to test these out to see if they actually offer superior management options for my needs. The blog offers many practical advantages: ease of use, familiarity with the format, the ability to move quickly between this blog and some other blogs that have these stories and poems in them. All I have to do is log into Blogger from any location and I can access this private blog immediately. I can also selectively share it, if I ever choose to do that, or make it public with the flip of a switch. (Well, two switches.) I may take some of the other approaches in parallel, once I have my content uploaded here.
ReplyDeleteGoogle Drive has a lot of the same functionality as Blogger and you can also share it and make it public with the flip of a switch.
ReplyDeleteJust sayin'