SAVE YOUR WORK!

While launching a new site for EGM is exciting, the fact that we’re pruning a good chunk of the mess that was 8 years of previous content has given me a bit of an emotional crisis. So, if you are a “content creator,” please listen to a bit of advice!

SAVE WHAT YOU MAKE. SAVE THE WORKING MATERIALS YOU USE TO MAKE THAT FINALIZED STUFF YOU’RE SAVING.

We live in an era when safely and securely having back-ups of our writing or artwork is cheaper and easier than it’s ever been, so please make use of that.

I’ve been trying to get into the habit of saving my own copy of everything of value that I write, and yet I do get lazy about it sometimes—but I, and you, cannot. If it’s on somebody else’s website, it could be gone at any time. Even then, though, just having a straight text dump of your writing (for example) isn’t always enough. You forget to save final versions, publishing dates, extra elements that may have been posted along with the writing, etc.

I’m a huge proponent of having your own personal website for your work, but you may work somewhere that doesn’t want you to be able to put up your writing elsewhere, even on a personal site. Still, you can easily have your own WordPress install that’s locked down and private. Even then, though, remember that something could always happen to that too. A database could corrupt, a rogue plugin could make it hard for you to get back into your site, your web host could disappear overnight. So, never have that be your one and only back-up.

What this all leads to is this one main idea: Respect your work. Don’t just let it go out there and potentially disappear forever. And, don’t even think of counting on the company you’re working for to have proper archives. I’ve been working in this industry off and on since I was right out of high school, and it’s amazing how proper archiving and back-up procedures still don’t exist a lot of the time all those years later. And, in this mostly digital era, they may even be worse. Save everything and anything you can if it has any amount of value to you. Not just the finished articles, but the full interviews you pulled your quotes from, your research notes, whatever.

I’m trying to do all of this for myself on one level here on this site. I still have a long way to go with it—but I’m digging through my archives and putting up 20+ years of my writing. It can be a real struggle digging back into work you did for tiny sites, out-of-date word processing apps, print magazines, whatever. It can also be a lot of fun to rediscovered all of that stuff, however—even the pieces you might now be embarrassed by.

I’ve thought about this especially in the last few years thanks to our twins. Not that I think I’m an award-winning writer or anything, but I want our daughters to have the chance to read their mom’s work if they’re ever interested in doing so.

So, yeah: save your work. Save it, save it, save it. Recognize the value of your hard work and creative efforts. Even if it was one of 20 stories that went up on a click bate website on some random day, YOU should be the one to decide if it deserves to live on or not.