Have you planned on a fire, flood, hurricane or other disaster? If you keep all your writing on the cloud? What happens if the U.S. and China or Russia go to war and all the satellites and the Internet are the first causalities?

We depend so much on today’s technology that we forget how vulnerable we as writers still are.

I remember the story of a novelist, back in the days when a correcting Selectric was as good as we ever thought writing was ever going to get, who was 350 pages into a 600+ novel when he had a fire. He lost everything and had to start from scratch again.  From that day on, after he got his house rebuilt, he had a fireproof safe put in the floor of the office and at the end of each day, he’d send a copy of that day’s pages to his agent.  Of course, he never had another disaster again after that.

Do you have a clean, neat hard copy of all your work? Do you have a copy of it somewhere other than your own bookshelf or home?  Ever thought about investing in a safe deposit box?   With a clean always scan your material and put in back electronically into your computer, the cloud or an offsite hard drive.

This all sounds super paranoid, but just because you don’t prepare for the worst doesn’t mean it won’t happen?

If you do keep a clean, neat and corrected master copy of your work somewhere, it might be worthwhile to wait to generate that copy until after you’ve had a few readers beyond your editor read your work. I know from personal experience that as soon as you generate a finished copy, the first things to strike you is a misspelling on the first page.

I know what it’s like to have multiple external discs. It can take me almost 20 minutes sometimes to close down for the day saving to the right folder on each drive.  I do this because I use both Mac and PC.  I also make notes on my phone and my I-pad.

What works for you?

I just copied my latest e-book and had it spiral bound at Office Max. Additionally, I’ve discovered that if I do find a mistake, I can make corrections on that page and have it repunched and rebound.

A tip from Hollywood where they use two (not three) brass brads to bind three hole punched scripts — but they write the name of the script on the edge of the pages so you can stack scripts on a shelf or on the floor and still know which one is which without having to pull it out and having to look at the cover.

But I also have hardcopies of my screenplays in three-hole binders with the name taped on the side (I use a lot of black binders — writing on them with a Sharpie doesn’t work). In addition I have 3 ½ inch floppies and even a few Zip Drives.  Yeah, I know, it’s hard to find devices and software that can read these things any more — but what do I do?  If you keep writing long enough, and live long enough, you’ll face similar problems in the future.

One of the realities is that what used to be dead, old novels, plays, short stories and even screenplays, could all become new again years from now. I’ve read stories and blogs and seen YouTube videos about writers who pull out old work of theirs, once published in hardback or paperback but today completely out of print and suddenly find a new audience when turned into e-books.

What none of us know is where the future is going to take fiction in your lifetime. Having good clear versions of your material both electronically and in hardcopy could be worth more than its weight in gold — or whatever becomes the basis of future currency.

And one final thought — what if you and your work is never “discovered” by the world at large until after you’re gone? Is there a good, clean copy of what you’ve created for the Smithsonian and future classrooms?  Think — Herman Melville.

In 1987 Marsha Sinetar wrote a book about helping people find their career called Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow. That’s the bottom line for you as a writer. I’m not one of those who believes you have to suffer for your art. I think you ought to love it. If you’re going to get up and do it every day, nothing is going to motivate you more than your passion for your art.

French actor, playwright, Moliere said it best when he said, “Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.” Funny, sure, but also good sense.

I once worked at a university where everybody in one particular department just hated each other. They wouldn’t speak to each other in the hallways and saw everything any colleague did as somehow a slight against them. They brooded and snarled at each other — they gave themselves ulcers with the acid they constantly generated in their stomachs. I could never figure out why anybody wanted to work there. I would have been looking for another job every day.

Compared with the department I worked in where everyone enjoyed each other’s company and regularly had lunch together — it was the difference between heaven and hell every single day.

No matter what it is you write, romance, action/adventure, westerns, science fiction, mystery, history — whatever — you most likely aren’t an expert in it and have to do research for your writing.  That’s wonderful.  You keep learning.  Even if you are an expert, what you know also fuels your speculation and your curiosity. A famous Methodist minister in New York of the 1930’s and 40’s, Ralph W. Sockman once said, “The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.” You already realize that “What if…” is the most important question of your profession. Your mind wanders best in fields of familiarity.

Think about science fiction — it’s mostly speculation about what we know of the science of our universe. What if there was a universe that operated by different rules? What if the rules of physics, sociology, or any other science were taken to it’s logical extreme — but what if these rules were taken to their illogical extremes?  What you know, what you love, is where you are your most comfortable and your most creative.

As a writer you need a platform — a collection of your work — upon which to build a career.  When you begin, nobody know who you are or what you write.  Of course, you could be a one-book-wonder, but don’t count on it.  You should be in this writing business for the long haul.  And the more you love what you do, the more of it you can crank out.  There are numerous writers who like what they do so much that they write more than their publisher can deal with.  (I write e-books so I don’t have that problem.)

British author Henry Patterson wrote thirty-five adventure novels between 1959 and 1974. Sometimes he turned out three or four such novels per year and his publisher demanded that he began using some other pseudonyms. So he wrote under his own name as well as those of James Graham, Martin Fallon, and Hugh Marlowe, and Jack Higgins.   Then in 1975 one of the novels he put out was The Eagle Has Landed under the name of Jack Higgins. That was a worldwide best seller. So his publisher ended up reissuing all of his other books under the Jack Higgins. His catalogue of books paid off wonderfully. This could happen to you.

If you try to write what you think readers like, but you don’t really enjoy the topic, the genre, or the field, it’s going to be like doing any job you don’t love. You can do it, you may even be able to make a living at it, but there’s no joy in it for you.

Now think about your writing. Do you write what you love? Would you read your kind of story if you hadn’t written it? Think about what kinds of books you read. You tend to read what you love. Is that what you write?

As I wrote at the beginning of this, write what you love. That’s where your bliss is — that’s what you can look forward to everyday. You only go around once. Why not ride the horse you like best?

There’s a magazine cartoon from either “The Writer” or “The Writer’s Digest” from years ago I remember. It showed a writer standing at a double window looking out on a fall day in his tweed jacket and a pipe in his mouth, talking to his wife dressed in an apron and holding a feather duster in one hand. The home office had full bookcase lined walls with an empty electric typewriter in the middle of a large messy desk. The writer was saying to his wife, “Just because I’m not writing, it doesn’t mean I’m not writing.”

We always have old ideas, storylines, and concepts percolating somewhere on a back burner. Sometimes it might be an almost forgotten character or incident which only needs the right stimulus to ignite into a glowing, roaring inspiration. Even when I’m supposed to be going to sleep, my wife will sometimes elbow me in bed and say, “Stop writing for today. I can hear the gears turning.” My wife is a poet, painter, jewelry maker and children’s story author. She understands how it works.

But it’s a concept many non-writers have trouble accepting — except, perhaps, for poets who are always seeing the world through unique eyes. Any moment for the poet can become like Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” But for the mystery, scifi, or romantic writer?   The same is true.

There are two requirements for the writer to be writing when he isn’t writing.

First there’s the awareness that you have your passive radar, sonar and both audio and video recorders always on. Something someone says to you or around you — even something you see or hear from a wall mounted TV in a bar or restaurant — could provide the missing puzzle piece you’ve needed for a long time or even for the scene you’re working on at the moment.   You have to develop this wakefulness at a subconscious level and make sure it’s on and operating.

It reminds me of the ol’ joke about the preacher caught in a flood when the local river topped its banks. The police came through telling everyone to evacuate. . But the preacher said, “No, God will save me!” As the water began to rise and covered the streets, the local fire department was able to reach his front porch in a rubber boat and offered to take him to safety. Again the preacher refused saying, “No. God will save me!” When the water swept his house into the river, the preacher had to climb up to his roof. A Coast Guard rescue helicopter dropped a sling with a Coastie rescuer but again the preacher shook his head. “No. God will save me!” The house finally broke apart and the preacher drowned. When he got to heaven he met God and said he just didn’t understand. “I thought you were going to save me,” he pleaded. God replied, “I sent the police, the fire department and the Coast Guard.”

With writers, we have to be willing to help ourselves — to be willing to pick up on available stimuli and to be open to see things for more than just what’s on the surface.

Singer/songwriter Don Henley of the rock group, The Eagles, said a friend of his was always coming up with phrases or sayings which ended up part of songs Henley wrote. For example, they were in a bar one night which catered to working rockers and trophy wives looking for an illicit one-night stand. Henley’s friend was looking at the women at the bar and said, “Look at those lying eyes.” Lying Eyes became one of The Eagles biggest hits.

The second requirement is a way to write down or record the flashes of insight. I always carry 3 by 5 cards with me and have them beside my bed, beside my easy chair and on my desk. But Evernote or Penultimate, Pocket, and an array of other note taking programs available for your phone or pad make it so easy to make yourself a reminder. And don’t forget the onboard camera. Sometimes the quickest way to get something down is to snap a picture. The important thing is not to forget that flash you got somewhere, somehow.

As a writer, even when you’re not writing, you’re still writing.