How best to save/archive one's fiction for posterity?

[justTripn]

Recently I was talking with Alelou about archiving. She said that much of her X-Files fic was lost when the sites that hosted it ended. I wrote a DS9 fanfic in the second year of DS9 and saved it on a diskette. When I went to post it online a few years ago, I realized none of my computers had a slot for a diskette. Luckily I had one paper copy, and I retyped the whole thing onto my computer.

So what do we do with our Trip and T'Pol fanfic? What is the best way to preserve it? Is is good enough to post it on two or three sites and cross our fingers that they don't all crash at once? Can we put it all on a jump drive and throw it in a drawer? Will jump drives still be a thing in 15 years? Should we print out at least one paper copy and put it in a filing cabinet? I'm feeling like one paper copy might be safest.

[WarpGirl]

I know this sounds horrible. But I don't worry about it. Then again, if you don't count the memories wiped away during a few stints where the doctors were pumping me with drugs I have a near perfect memory. So if I lost everything I could retype it all if I chose. But frankly I'm not deluded enough to think anyone might care if my stuff was lost. That said you could do what I do, find a friend or a relative with a spare hard drive and back everything up on to it when they mess with your computer.

[Distracted]

I email my stuff to myself and save the emails, so unless Yahoo goes out of business I'm good.

[justTripn]

Well, that saves it for you, but what about posterity? Do you want your grandchildren to find it when you pass away (which they might, if it were on paper in the attic)? BTW, I truly have nothing to do to day. Can you tell, lol . . . . ?

[WarpGirl]

With my family's view on my hobby posterity isn't really an issue for me. Although it frightens me to admit it, I accept the fact that if I should somehow be blessed with children this stuff might not interest them. And since I remember every word I've ever written, I could probably recite it all anyway. That said, I can totally understand why it would be of concern to other people. Me I just don't worry about it.

[justTripn]

LOL. Well that's nice for you. I know that twenty years from now, I'll will be able to reread my own story and wonder how it is going to end. Could be sooner the way my memory is. I've already had that weird experience. My husband made a student film in college and all his friend (including me) had bit parts in in. Well, twenty years later a college friend came to visit and brought a copy and we all sat down and watched it. It was the weirdest thing. We were watching OURSELVES and waiting on the edge of our seats to hear what we were going to say next, and then laugh at the surprising joke. And our kids would point to us on the screen and go "Who is that?"

[panyasan]

I also e-mail my stories to my panyasan-email account and use the document option to save the stories. To print a story and placing them in a writing case is also a good idea. Maybe you could find out which person in your family would like have this writing case with stories and give the writing case to that person when you're old and gray.

[EntAllat]

Over the years I've moved all of my digital archives (fiction, email archives, photos, documents, research files etc.) from one type of electronic media to another. It gets a little easier as time goes by and as media storage gains more capacity. Mine may be a far more techie and extensive a situation than you'll need but:

As optical disk drives became more popular, I moved my hundreds of 3.5 diskettes to a handful of those disks. Then, when burnable CDs came about I moved the files again, from the optical disks to the CDs and eventually to DVD storage. Now I'm using a portable 500G harddrive as well as a small offsite backup server - and I have nightly backups of the files on my networked computers.

The gist if it here is that you'll need to keep moving your electronic mementos to the latest in storage if you want them to remain accessible. It's a regular maintenance thing now, and part of digital life. If you've got old diskettes that you no longer can access, ask around to see if anyone's got a plug-in USB disk drive you can borrow. (I had one of those handy when I needed to help faculty do the same.) Even if you've got a CD/DVD drive, it's probably a good idea to start moving anything you've got on those, off to some other storage. You can probably get away with moving everything to flash drive storage, or get a small external harddrive at this point.

Always have something that YOU control and keep and don't rely on online sources as your only repository for those files. I love Flickr but I can't imagine what would happen it it went away: one photographer recently had a scare when his account - and nearly 5,000 photos - was accidentally deleted. He was very, very lucky that they were able to restore it. Panyasan's idea of printing out your fiction (and important documents) into a hardcopy is also a great idea. If nothing else, you at least have that.

[Cogito]

If nothing else, you at least have that.

... mice permitting!

Nothing is certain, but the suggestion to back up onto removable physical media using whatever technology is current is about as good as you can hope for - assuming you have a real backup system and not just one copy that you keep overwriting. The various online services, hotmail/gmail archives, skydrive etc are all convenient but not something you'd want to rely on as your only backup solution.

[Silverbullet]

No one in my family would read any of my stuff. so it matters little if it is lost. I write for myself and for anyone who happens bye where it is posted, Trisilk, FF Net. If they comment that is good, if not then the story didn't resonate that well.

I have read of a few famous Authors who wanted their material destoryed when they died. Many destoryed it themselves to be sure. Hemingway did. Twain wanted his works stored and then published 100 years after his death. Twain did write some incinderary work.

SB