At the grocery store this week, a woman dropped a box of blueberries.  They went everywhere.  She was too old to pick them up, and people up and down the aisles just stopped and stared.  I just stopped and stared.  Her trembling voice, shouting “Cleanup—I need a cleanup!”  Embarrassed.  Close to tears.  Fucking blueberries.  All of us staring at blueberries.  A two minute pick up job.  Less if others help.  But we don’t.  We just stare, and argue with ourselves.

After a good minute or two of arguing, I deduce that I’m a complete and utter asshole, and put down my basket.  Pick up the blueberries.  Feel like an absolute idiot as my left palm fills and I have no space for all the rest.

Now it’s my trembling voice, weakly shouting “Anyone have a bag?”

People stare.  They keep staring.  The line six carts deep.  Everyone watching.  No one…

Tech Tips for Writers is an occasional post on overcoming Tech Dread. I’ll cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future Tip.

Q: I’m paranoid of losing my writing projects and family pictures so I back them up to an external drive, a flash drive, and in the cloud. My blog, though–It’s become an important cog in my PLN. If it blew up, I’d be lost. What do I do about backing it up?

A: If you use WordPress, it’s easy, they provide a native tool for that. Here’s what you do:

• Go to Tools>Export
• Select the ‘Export‘ option
• It’ll back it up as an XML file (you don’t have to understand what that is. Just know it’s the file that will save you if WordPress crashes)
• Save that…