29 January 2008

The Save Button Is Your Friend

The title says it is. The save button is a writer's best friend. Perhaps you don't realize that it is the one thing that can save you from a world of irritation. If not, perhaps a little story should help you get a clear picture:

Once upon a time a curious little writer, but the glorious age of twenty-four, was writing a little tale on his magical box of clickity goodness. His tiny fingers pushed down upon the mystical keys, producing the great parchments of his thinking mind. Words flowed like a river: one hundred, two hundred, and then three hundred.
But all was not well in the Kingdom of Writingswall. For there amongst the evil timbers of Hardware lay the Blockernauts, a wicked race of invisible beings bent on the destruction of all creative endeavors. They, in their disgusting ways, were prone to cause problems for the poor people of Writingswall, and it was this day that the Blockernauts had found a new victim. They flew fast through the air and no man or woman could see them. When they reached the writer, seeing his glorious progress on a great novel that would one day be revered for its literary merit, they came up with a wicked plan: overheat the magical box of clickity goodness.
So it was the heat built up, unbeknown to the little writer. Then, as the little writer leaned back ever so slightly to smile at his wondrous progress, the magical box of clickity goodness shut off. The little writer was frantic, pushing buttons, trying to figure out why his poor magical box of clickity goodness had turned off. He looked down at the magical connection to the powers of Writingswall, but all was well and no failure of power was a fault. Then, he managed to get it to turn back on, but when he looked again at his progress, he found it had disappeared, and the great writings of his minutes past were lost, never to be seen again.
The little writer learned a valuable lesson that day: save your work every thirty seconds.

This should be a magical rule for everyone. Laptops overheat, computers lock up, shut off, etc. Every computer has a problem, and it could happen to you. Don't let yourself get in a position like the little writer where your writing is permanently lost. It doesn't matter what type of computer you are on. Something can happen and Murphy's Law says it will happen. Don't get caught with your metaphorical pants down.

6 comments:

Jordan said...

This, I can understand completely. I once did a load of writing, which I thought was awesome, then, my computer crashed and everything was gone. And I was SO pissed off. Well done for reminding us of the impending danger, Shaun. :)

Anonymous said...

Nice story. xD

This used to happen to me, but now I save obsessively, and all of the writing programs I use have autosave buttons--because I also forget.

Nowadays, I'm more likely to pretend that I didn't save something. Why? Um -- I am a procrastinator. x.x

Unknown said...

Your soul depends on saving a lot :P.

Anonymous said...

yWriter has an autosave function that you can set to save every minute if you want.

And not every laptop does it, Shauny! Yeesh. It's just your retarded machine that I think you should return and get one with a proper OS on.

Tiny fingers ... riiiiiiiiight.

Unknown said...

They don't make laptops without Vista anymore Imelda...
And my laptop is fine, I just let it rest over an area that retains heat rather than disperses it. Generally the thing doesn't overheat. It's very rare.

Rafael Domination said...

I have an Autosave option on Microsoft Word that saves every one minute. The problem is, the computer lags for a few seconds every time it does so...