Welp, I was just given a crash course in remembering to save my work. Here I was thinking I would just draw up a nice little three or four hundred word blog post, no need to save it before I posted it a moment later when WHAM! Laptop battery dies and MS Word doesn’t want to recover the one file that I didn’t have saved. Rather than rewrite that whole thing which I’m not sure was that interesting anyways, I present to you the three stupid mindsets I get into that help me lose my work:

1) “It’s just a little project, I don’t need to save it.”

If you wouldn’t want it to all instantly vanish right now, then it’s worth saving. It doesn’t matter if you put fifteen minutes or two hours into it; you’re going to resent having to do it all over again if you lose it.

2) “It doesn’t matter, I’ve got it saved somewhere else.”

I know you believe that, but when it’s one little click away, why not “Save As” and have your most recent version up-to-date and right in front of you? And this is coming from someone who emails everything she writes to her three different email accounts, and keeps copies on a laptop and flash drive.

3) “Just let me finish what I’m doing right here—I’ll get to it in a minute.”

If you’re the sort of person who procrastinates on just saving their work (as I sometimes am…) this bodes worst of all for you because you know you’re not going to get around to redoing it any time soon if you do lose it…

In closing, watch you lap top battery meters, save your work, and back up! May the writing Gods smile on you and your stories as the computer Gods smile on your digital files.