Confession: I am a lowlevel hoarder. I'm collecting bottlecaps right now. I stash away all paper -- even demonic doodles from the most boring classes -- in folders around my bedroom. I don't often delete any of my images for fear of losing something important.
Granted, most of these images are collections of fanart I find really cool and funny comments from YouTube, etc. so there's not really much to worry about there. But losing my writing is a legit concern, and I'm telling the full truth when I say I was worrying about losing my stories late into last night.
"Ah, it'll be fine, everything's saved to Penana/Wattpad/insert writing platform here. It's the internet. What could go wrong?"1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoKsPL3y2hX
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A few things.
The greatest concern is that one of your accounts could get suspended for breaching rules. Accidentally or otherwise, that's pretty panic-inducing: everything you did on that account could be wiped from existence forever.
Hence the title of the issue: please back up your work!
Especially if it's online. First of all, I must remind you to press that save icon in the top-left corner when writing things in Penana. Every few hundred words or so should do it. I'm just paranoid because my internet goes down often, but it's always a possibility.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9Dsci695S7
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Secondly, it's worth having a file version of everything just in case the internet goes down or the website's servers kick the bucket. It's easier than ever to copy and paste, even if you have a few issues to do that with. Luckily enough, it's so much easier with Penana to do this, since they have the handy "export to PDF" or "export to text" options under your story so you can have a copy of all the issues you've published. (Thanks, Penana devs! Lifesavers.)
Wattpad doesn't have this, so I'm dreading the process of exporting from there. But it is a necessary evil, I reckon. Here's how I do things.
1. Open up the Penana website on a computer (I'm on my laptop). Login, and nagivate to your showcase.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuOgHndamam
2. Open up the work you want to backup. (> "read more")1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoI7xmcZHtb
3. Look on the right side of the page and scroll down. The "download to PDF" or as text options are underneath the Popularity section.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9V3bhDyYSu
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Although this method makes formatting the file a right pain for me (since 14-year-old me really liked making each sentence a new paragraph), I've been saving everything into text files.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuJ45Tf8Rce
4. "download as text". Click it. This should open up a text version of everything you've published for the story.
Now, here I found myself at a crossroads. What file type did I want my backups to be in? My options were:1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaMYhEwLplI
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(prepare for nerdiness.)1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhgFWeKr4aJ
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HTML - webpage. Opens in web browsers. Can be edited in plain text editing software. We did this in class for a few lessons and it was cool...it's like an intro to programming languages... HyperText Markup Language... blah blah blah1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEiO0bRshg9
PDF - Portable Document Format. Opens in Adobe Reader.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpnlBCtKGAH
DOCX - fancy eXtensible Markup Language-based format developed by Microsoft in 2007. It's like a newer version of the .odt, and opens Word 2007 (Windows)/Word 2008 (Mac) or later. Try renaming the .docx extention to .zip to see the contents, since it's actually a zip file in disguise.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH61Z9YhF7A
RTF - stands for Rich Text Format, but not so human-readable (probably encoded in binary, a base in which most aren't fluent). Opens in word processors.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5WfVmAzxT8
ODT - xml based. When we talk .odt, we mean Open Document Text. Opens in word processors; it's part of the Open Document Format/ODF family, so .ods is its spreadsheet sibling and .odp is its presentation sibling. There's stuff about "ISO International Standard format" here, meaning that many programs should be able to open this file type.
Since .odt files are the ones that are recommended in archives already, I've been saving my texts in that format. I have already saved everything in .docx and .rtf so far but you can never be too paranoid.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTt4bEmhfqi
Although ACTUALLY, it seems like .odt files are like packages of .xml files and style info, so if you're focusing on the words and not fancy fonts, XML should be fine.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8hkr5cwb9p
Still, compatibility with all these file types should continue for a little while yet. I should be set for a good ten years/before the apocalypse. This decision was also based on the info I got from this website and the digital curation article the writer of the website linked - because hey, it's nice to read your things in ten (to twenty?) years!1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUkfW41U22NIt's not. It's only been four years and I hate my past self.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbnc7conjX6
Anyway, anyway, back to backups. After getting to the handy webpage version of your story, there are a few ways you can go with this.
Save as HTML?1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOWhgraoehx
To do this, ctrl + s whilst on the webpage. (If you're not tech-savvy, no problem. That just means hold ctrl, press s.) Rename the file and save it to a location. You can open that up and it should redirect you to the same-looking page with all your words and images.
Save as another file type?1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxtqNEp5VRa
A few more steps on this one. You'll need a suitable word processor for this - I use WordPad because I'm on Windows. This should be fine for Linux as well, but for Mac or another operating system you should try another program (Notes or TextEdit?).1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9KxFJWw09I
After a bit more research, it seems like if you're on Mac, things work slightly differently. You guys don't have our fancy keyboard shortcuts, so good luck.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBRGSZCoEo9
Assumption made: you're working on WordPad.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH33ru5Km3L
Whilst on the webpage, it's ctrl + a to select all and ctrl + c to copy. Move over to the text editor and ctrl + v to paste. When you save, click File > Save as (but hover over the arrow).1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7w9aS5X2gr
Here, you can save your text in a Rich Text Format (.rtf), Office Open XML document (.xml) or Open Document Text (.odt). Not too tricky.
Disclaimer: I'm writing from 2020, but the software on my laptop might not be up to date. Sorry if the above instructions are no longer accurate, as companies can do all sorts of funny things to the user interfaces.
But why not just save it all as a PDF, I hear you wail? Well, you can! I'm not going to stop you from doing that. But a few things to note:1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnkkguCe8i4
- it's a bit harder to edit PDFs. Or maybe that's just me not being able to use Adobe Acrobat.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb0JR6rQPXy
- I'm linking back to the archeology data service guide, which says "although an open standard... blah de blah it's created from another format, not ideal for preservation"1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxKV6BRR6pM
- uhhhh big data1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ13idE0P6X4
- PDF/A files are better for archives. Maybe I'll go into detail another time. I need to stop researching file types and get on with things for now.
That said, I'm trying to plan for the long long long term here with a digital archive, and there's no need for you to go to such lengths if you just wanted to do a simple backup.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXDegY5GcuZ
Quick edit for clarification:1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGSYmomFu3i
Backup = for things you will return to frequently.1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzBLUgoOccq
Archive = for things you want to store away. You probably won't bring them down from the shelf (or cloud!) for years to come. 1492Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi9wQfmIEIp
I'm actually doing both at once, if that makes sense -- copying all my projects, even unfinished ones, and sticking them somewhere safe so I have something to fall back on in the worst case scenario. If I end up changing or adding to a project, I'll just upload the changes/new parts to save a little bit of space.
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(Wow, I've rambled on.)
That's just how I rolled, so now I have a whole folder of old works ready to upload to a cloud location, which is a whole other kettle of fish.
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