'What software do you use to write?'

I get asked that. And there way be obvious answers, with 99% of the world using Word to sling, well, words. But there's often more to writing than that.

I do use Word. Increasingly. It has styles and formatting that makes the conversion to digital file formats, such as .prc and .epub, almost seamless. But I do not like Word. I have written all my novels on something else.

WordPerfect. Yes, old school. Why? Two words--REVEAL CODES. WordPerfect's ability to let you see all the clunky code behind your writing can clear up errors in one step that take two or three to fix in Word, if you can find them at all.

So that's for novels. For screenplays there really is one overwhelming choice--Final Draft. Now, I absolutely hate how they broke the ability to use centrally networked files on multiple machines between versions 7 and 8, but it is the industry standard. And, it does what it's supposed to, quite easily.

So, there's the writing software. All done.

Nope. What happens after you write? Do you just let that fragile file containing your masterpiece sit on your hard drive? Not me.

For automated backup to external drives, over network and directly connected to my main office machine, I use a program called Vice Versa Pro. It might be version 2, or 3, I'm not sure. All I know is that, after setting up a profile to tell it what's important to me and where I want it backed up, it runs in the background and detects changes to any of these files. Every few minutes it backs them up. I don't even have to think about it. Which I love.

I also use a proprietary piece of software unavailable to the public that backs up the same files to an offsite location. Multiple locations, actually. It also e-mails copies of my 'prime project of the moment' to me each night, so there is always a copy somewhere accessible. Unless Godzilla takes down the grid.