Back up your files. Stop, don’t read any more until you’ve saved all your progress either to a cloud service or flash drive.
Are you done?
No? What did I just say, go and save those files. You never know what could happen.
How about now? Good? Great.
Taking care of those files is one of the most crucial things you can do this month. make sure to hit CTRL+S several times, and do it by hand, just to be safe.
As I was sending a manuscript to my editor, I was cleaning up some problems with my dialogue tags. I’m going through and I loop all the way back to my first chapter. My heart fell to my feet. All the corrections and additions to my first two chapters hadn’t saved the day before. An hour’s worth of work gone. Thankfully, I had made physical copies to take to a conference. It took over an hour, but I put the pieces back together.
It’s why I stress how important it is to constantly back up your work. I use Google Drive for ease of use. Some people I know use Dropbox, some use One Drive. Whatever you choose to go with isn’t really significant. Use whatever you feel most comfortable with. And save to the cloud and to flash drive, just in case.