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I do the same thing with renaming the files.I have a folder for each writing project and inside that there are two other folders: Development and Drafts.
As I'm writing I use the Development folder. Once I get a first draft done, I move a copy to Drafts and do all edits in that.
I use Dropbox for backup. Quite handy because I don't have to move anything. As long as I've got WiFi access, the files are saved in the cloud as I write, as well as on my PC.
Cloud storage not only protects the files, but makes it easy to share them, or to access then from other devices. Want to check something while I'm on an iPad? No problem, the files are right there. If I change something, then the files get updated on my writing PC next time I log on.
Because I'm an obsessive planner, I have a "bible" for every project I have.TV Shows sometimes produce a show bible that basically details the show's universe and the key traits of the characters and whatever needed to keep the writers/producers on track. It can be one simple rule or enough to actually be a book on itself.
It keeps me from losing interest in a project and keep my writing tight (I often drift away from the plot... which is great because free writing is awesome and inspirational) during the editing stage.
I start a project with a two or three page summary of overall plot, characters and key events or dialog that I want to be sure to include. As I ponder more on the project I add to this document until I'm ready to start actual work on it. At that point I start a spreadsheet with rows for each chapter and their related perspectives, timeline, key plot points and descriptions. This is my roadmap from this point on when working on that the novel. I keep this 'roadmap' and the current draft in a separate folder. After reviews of a draft I create a new folder and dopy the prior drafts chapters and roadmap into it and edit those. That way I can always look back at prior drafts and see if the direction I'm going is really needed. My first book had six revision folders. I suspect my second one, which is through its first draft and review, will have three to four revision folders.
One thing I would like to sort out, though, is some way to store, organize, and access data about specific writing projects.Like ideas and info on world creation. I have two separate worlds that I've written several works in, and intend to write more in. So I need a repository for data in those worlds.
If I make something up while writing a new story (a new technology, or a new term for something already discussed in a different way, etc.) I'd like to be able to store that information, plus commentary, someplace that's easy to reference later.
I've tried using Evernote, but I find it a pain to use. Once the data's in there it's OK, but the process of adding stuff to it is too much like work. And, I dislike its limited file nesting (I think it can only do two layers of nested folders)
I feel like maybe I need something like a wiki...or something.
Any ideas?
I keep a Timeline document. My book was an alternate type of what-if universe, but overlaid on the historical, political, scientific, and military stuff of the the real history. I my particular document, I outlined the American and Soviet presidents, the invention of different types of technologies and their invention, any wars and with who, and the timeline of my characters and their development. I once had 4 days where I counted down every last little devlopemtn of a standoff that was occurring and I made a special timeline document for that. Withour keeping track of where all the players were at any given moment, I would have been lost.
I also keep all research and editing documents organized and backed up in folders, everything from military ranks and their hardware, Russian male surnames, research on Navy SEALs, Vietnam War, and a hundred other topics, separated from folders containing punctuation and grammer rules.
If I still had a day job, I'd hire you guy to organize stuff. My filing used to be "proximity-archeological": meaning big piles of paper, in which old was on the bottom and new top; high priority within arm's reach and low priority way over there.Translating this "system" to a computer has proved dicey. But I do back up everything, in three or four places. But not to a cloud: Aristophanes put me off clouds. (I think it was Aristophanes, anyway.)
My books are saved in Dropbox. If they were accidentally deleted, I can go to Dropbox and recover them for a period of time.They also end up getting saved in Time Machine on my Mac.
I actually write the books on my iPad, using Word for iPad. I have to set it up on my Mac to get the right Title, Header 1 and Normal types, but that carries over to the iPad just fine.
When I post on CreateSpace, I just upload my docx and let CreateSpace fix the margins. Then I download the fixed version and go over it, changing Links to bold or normal fonts with underlines -- they don't show well in a printed book.
For iBooks, I saved every chapter separately from Word, then imported those files as chapters into iBooks Author. A bit tedious, but it worked great.
Nice idea for topic, Morris.I notice no one has mentioned Google Docs ("Drive"). That's what I use now for writing (on iMac). I have a huge screen (27") and have several windows open with multiples tabs I can click through quickly: timeline, characters, scene summary, drafts, et al. Everything saves to the cloud almost instaneously, and I also save periodically to a "Safety" folder on my desktop, simply adding the date's suffix to the file name (_071015).
And FYI, Google Docs recognizes Word's tracking fine. And exports to .docx, too. So I can interface with editors or others easily.
***POSSIBLE TIP: Because I'm a visual person (and have written non-fiction books on digital workflows for art and photography), I have a couple of different color profiles ready to go (in my Color Preferences) for viewing different things on my desktop. I find out-of-the-box monitors way too bright (and cold) for my eyes, tiring them after a couple of hours. So I've created a special "warm-dark-writer's" profile (~4000K in color temp) that I switch to for extending writing sessions. The screen is warm and dark and cozy without all that horrible contrast strain. Then, if I have to check critical colors, e.g. for cover designs, I'll switch to the latest 6500K color profile that I custom make with a Spyder Colorimeter. You don't have to get that elaborate, but I'll tell you: if you've ever experienced eye strain from computer work, having a "writer friendly" color monitor profile is a life-saver.
I'm trying to get in the habit of emailing myself a copy of the manuscript I'm working on every time I make significant changes.I am being reluctant about it.
Mod
Every single file, beginning with firat draft individual chapters, gets saved to a folder on the comp as well as a passport. I then email it to myself, save a copy on the phone, copy on the tablet, and upload to drive. Email is never deleted. Why no, I'm not paranoid. Why do you ask?
Charles wrote: "I'm trying to get in the habit of emailing myself a copy of the manuscript I'm working on every time I make significant changes.I am being reluctant about it."
When I first started writing, I used Notes on the iPad, and I emailed myself a copy about every 5,000 words. But I used iCloud notes, so it also synced to my iPhone and Mac.
Christina wrote: "Why no, I'm not paranoid. Why do you ask? "You heard that?
Christina wrote: "Every single file, beginning with firat draft individual chapters, gets saved to a folder on the comp as well as a passport. I then email it to myself, save a copy on the phone, copy on the tablet,..."I think you have just achieved immortality for your books.
Once they go live, I do go back and delete the working chapters, but I still keep multiple backups of the final draft. I think this stems mostly from my days of cobbling together my computer from whatever castoff hardware my friends weren't using, which meant every machine I owned, up until I finally purchased a laptop about seven years ago, was a ticking time bomb. At least I don't have to write to CDs or keep track of multiple SD cards anymore.
Christina wrote: "Once they go live, I do go back and delete the working chapters, but I still keep multiple backups of the final draft. I think this stems mostly from my days of cobbling together my computer from w..."I finally got rid of my 5.25" floppies not too long ago. I think they are all backed up to those 40 MB Syquest zip drives.
Christina wrote: "...At least I don't have to write to CDs or keep track of multiple SD cards anymore. ..."In the late '80s-early '90s I used to backup to floppies and tape drives and put them into a bank safety deposit box. Then the bank got robbed! And my wife got tired of sharing her silverware and family mementos with computer disks.
I'm not fancy with this backup stuff. At some point, I plan to accidentally delete my work the day before I'm scheduled to publish, and then I will cry. Until that time, I plan to continue in blissful ignorance. Isn't life great?
Oh man, I wish I could say that I forgot about the 5.25" floppies, but embarassingly, I cannot. They were the standard in my first year of college, but then I took some years off to do some soul searching*, came back and walked in to the computer lab only to have the kid behind the counter laugh at my confusion of how the world had changed in a few short years.*this may or may not have involved a lot of inebriation and reading of pretentious literature.
So, here's a trick of a different nature. First, I outline the basic premise of my story in about a paragraph. It's an ugly paragraph, about 1000 words of what was I thinking?
Then I go back, break my idea into chapters and expound. I also name my chapters at this point, though I may change those names later.
I guestimate word counts here per chapter.
I then determine how many chapters I want complete by the end of the month, and a word count goal. Not the silly unrealistic NaNoWriMo.(If you can write 50,000 words per month in a good way, I admire you, but that sort of writing isn't for me, since writing still is and probably always will be a leisure activity for me. I enjoy writing.) Probably something closer to 10,000 words per month, which is fair since I write Novellas and have a 6 month turn-over, including beta testing and proofreading.
From that point, I determine a daily goal. What I love about the 400 words per day goal is that it's simple enough in case I do get blocked and need to write ugly but it's also long enough to work into a groove and I generally smash the goal.
3 months later, the first draft is ready. I edit to make sure I'm not sending the betas something atrocious. I then beta one group, have a series of betas look for issues, edit, turn to my next betas, edit, turn to a third set of eyes, edit, then read the book myself about a dozen times to work out any annoying kinks, I run the full story through Grammarly to pick up anything I missed, and then direct to createspace to get the book ready. Mission accomplished.
I miss playing Zaxxon on the Commodore 64. :(
I keep backups mainly in case my computer decides to eat what I've been working on. I also keep dated backups of various early versions for the archives of my work someone is keeping in an antique chest in England. I also send her my hand-written first thoughts (even those I write in the dark and without my glasses so in the morning even I can't read them), and occasionally the notebook I wrote them in.
I'm really not good at regular backups once I'm writing. Something I need to work on. My favourite tool is Evernote. I use the free version, which is more than enough for a *lot* of stuff. I have a section for story ideas, and within that a note for each genre that's really just the very basic one or two line ideas. When something starts to build, I give it its own note so I can work on that a little.
When I'm away from home and just have my tablet, I use Evernote for first drafts.
I use a separate section for my little systems - a note on all the steps I take once I've uploaded a book and am onto the first promo, a list of Facebook groups to post to, a list of female / male and surnames for characters, a master list of keywords for each genre and so on.
I've always been a list person, and evernote has just about trained me out of keeping little scraps of paper. It syncs to my laptop, phone and tablet and I'm not sure how I'd manage without it!
As you edit you are indeed still writing. As you decide for yourself the mix of long sentences and short ones, of passionate verbs and softer ones, as you learn how to vary the rhythms of your sentences and connect a character's emotional states for continuity, you are developing yourself as a writer. The more time you spend editing a work the better the writing skills you will start off with the next time.
Charles wrote: "I miss playing Zaxxon on the Commodore 64. :("YES! I love the simpler games. Thanks, I haven't thought of Zaxxon in years!
Iffix wrote: "So, here's a trick of a different nature. First, I outline the basic premise of my story in about a paragraph. It's an ugly paragraph, about 1000 words of what was I thinking?
Then I go back, br..."
My workflow/thought process is similar. I open Notepad and just starting putting what flows into little blurps of info. no real structure or reason, just little paragraphs of content.
I keep those notes in the bottom of my word doc when I start the story and delete them as I use them.
Christina wrote: "Oh man, I wish I could say that I forgot about the 5.25" floppies, but embarassingly, I cannot. They were the standard in my first year of college...""You kids have it easy, back in my day..."
Actually, back in my college days 5.25" floppies would have been a miracle! (Well, they were actually first made the year I graduated from HS, but only people with access to the mainframes would have had access to them in college...they didn't become the standard storage for computers of all kinds until the '80s.)
In the programming classes I took in college we actually used punch cards. You'd wait in line for like 2-5 hours to get on a punch card machine (about the size of a kitchen range plus dishwasher combined). Then you'd have to wait another 2-5 hours in line for access to a punch card reader...only to have your programmed kicked out by some grad student with priority access who got to use one of the few dummy terminals on campus.
No, I did not do well in those classes.
Micah wrote: "Then you'd have to wait another 2-5 hours in line for access to a punch card reader...only to have your programmed kicked out by some grad student with priority access who got to use one of the few dummy terminals on campus...."Mine tended to come back with a "bad delimiter" error. I also recall our instructor showing us a vial of ferrite-cores from the memory and how amazed we all were. Those lil suckers were tiny!
Eliza wrote: "Because I'm an obsessive planner, I have a "bible" for every project I have."I want one of those.
(puts "story bible" on bucket list)
Using a good text to speech program, and when I say good I mean good "voices" such as the ones from Neospeech, can greatly aid in the editing process. The free voice from Microsoft is awful unless you like listening to robots.Being able to hear your words spoken out loud by somebody else other than yourself is a great aid in detecting grammatical error as well as poor phrasing and other writing errors such as the overuse of a particular word or expression.
I share other people's paranoia about losing drafts etc. but deal with this by working in Dropbox, which is free. Even if you accidentally lose everything, you'll be able to recover it from another PC, which will have the draft that existed when it was last booted up. (Provided you disconnect it from the net before booting it up again.) It's also very convenient because it lets you work in multiple locations - you will always have the latest version on your desktop. What it isn't so good for, is large graphics, as you only get 2GB with the free version (you can have a terabyte if you want, but they charge for that!) Also, it is secure so far as I know but I don't keep very sensitive documents (e.g. bank info) in there, just in case.
Can be installed simply by going to dropbox.com - or if you use the link below, Dropbox will give me a little extra space for having referred you.
https://db.tt/gY6td24m
V.W. wrote: "Using a good text to speech program, and when I say good I mean good "voices" such as the ones from Neospeech, can greatly aid in the editing process. The free voice from Microsoft is awful unless ..."Yep, I've posted this on many occasions, but I would argue that the worse the AI, the better chance you'll catch typos. I have an ancient 3rd gen kindke with a robotic monotone voice that often mispronounces simple words and I find that's the one that helps me catch more typos. I recwntly bought a Fire and Ivonna has some major hicups, like omitting words completely or garbling them so badly that I have to start over.
With either, though, I have to read along on a different device entirely if I want to mark my edits as I go.
I concur on the backup for my writing. Not only do I back things up on a harddrive, but I also occasionally email things to myself AND use a cloud service. : )
I agree, backup is an absolute must. I have three different flashdrives with different versions of my book. One's a backup I update when I can, the other is a flashdrive that contains my book as it currently appears in print, and the other is my main flashdrive that I use to write my other stories. All three flashdrives are backed up onto my laptop as well as 2 desktops. I'm WAY to paranoid to use online services - I always feel like I'll be hacked and my work be deleted or stolen - but I may slowly ease into using the Cloud or Dropbox in the future.
I have a simple tip that I hope is helpful.When editing, while writing or doing final edits, I create a new document that I generally call, CUTS. When I cut a sentence or paragraph to tighten my manuscript, I cut and paste them all to that one document.
Later, I can review them to see if my editor persona was correct or overzealous.
Mod
When editing, while writing or doing final edits, I create a new document that I generally call, CUTS. When I cut a sentence or paragraph to tighten my ..."
Interesting. I use track changes when I edit in the same way.
Morris wrote: "I hope to open up and do a sort of exchange of helpful ideas different authors use in editing or writing. I open up with this one...On whatever book I am working on, I save today's changes under ..."
Micah wrote: "I do the same thing with renaming the files.
As I write sometimes I get a new idea and something new to write about, so I have to keep saving with dates and in different folder name of that subject.
I have a folder for each writing project and inside that there are two other folders: Development and Drafts.
As I'm writing I use the Development fol..."
Riley wrote: "Jay wrote: "I have a simple tip that I hope is helpful.When editing, while writing or doing final edits, I create a new document that I generally call, CUTS. When I cut a sentence or paragraph to..."
That works. I just prefer to view a simple list that I can quickly scan through. Track changes will give you a listing, but I don't find it as helpful. Perhaps, I'm just addicted to paper!
I write all my books, fiction and non-fiction, in Scrivener. It's a program that stores EVERYTHING about the book in a single file: scenes, chapters, character sketches, plot diagrams, locations and more. Anything in the book file is no more than 2 or 3 clicks away. When I close the program, it saves the files and makes a backup copy which I store on Dropbox.
I've been using Scrivener for just a couple of weeks, and I love it! It is just as you said, everything in one place and very easy to get to. I'm about to start my first novel, and this program is going to be immensely useful.
Ray wrote: "I've been using Scrivener for just a couple of weeks, and I love it! It is just as you said, everything in one place and very easy to get to. I'm about to start my first novel, and this program is ..."I've used Scrivener for years and I figure I use about 30-40% of its capabilities. I keep discovering new things I can do with it.
Briana wrote: "I agree, backup is an absolute must. I have three different flashdrives with different versions of my book. One's a backup I update when I can, the other is a flashdrive that contains my book as it..."I do the same. I have several flash drives that I use to back up my documents. I am not sure I will ever use the cloud, as I'm equally paranoid. As far as editing, I use two programs that are add-ons to Word, Grammarly and Pro Writing Aid. They don't replace having someone review your work, but are about as close as anything I have found. If you use either of these programs, I would recommend disabling them in your options section of Word until you are ready to run a report. They will bog down the operation of Word.
Anita wrote: "Briana wrote: "I agree, backup is an absolute must. I have three different flashdrives with different versions of my book. One's a backup I update when I can, the other is a flashdrive that contain..."It's useful to have physical separation between backups. I keep a reasonably recent one in the centre console of my car so if a meteor strike or mutant star goat destroys my desk it will miss at least one copy. Plus I have copies on dropbox and spideroak.
Years ago when I worked in the city (for US readers that's London's equivalent of Wall Street) I was sent by the computer company to sort out a crisis at a bank. Staff had made three copies of the customer database, put them on the same shelf and gone home for christmas. When they got back a pipe had burst and all three disk packs were full of water. NOTHING ws readable. Mercifully I found a scratch pack which someone had left in a drive and, thank you God, it was the previous version of the database, only one day old.
This happened back in the 1970s, hence the disk packs, but its something I've never forgotten.
I just got the app, 5,000 WPH, and I love it! There's a free version and a paid version for 2.99. I have my current project listed in there and set my sprint timer, usually for 30 minutes, but up to an hour and when it goes off, it claps for you and says good job. I then add my words to my total count and it shows how my words you did in that sprint and how many more hours it'll take to get to your goal count. It also gives you star badges for 500 words and up. It makes me sit down and write, even if can only do a 15-minute sprint multiple times, your count at the end of the day is awesome! I also read Chris Fox's book, 5,000 WPH, and loved it, leading me to this great app.I also just got the book Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker and learning how to outline. I usually just go with the flow, but this method is powerful. So, my WIP is already at 30,000 words, but I outlined the rest using her method and now I'm diving in knowing exactly where I want to go, definitely getting me to my goal of launching in October. Her book is, to me, the best out there on the subject. She knows what she's talking about and turned me from a panster to an outliner!
I do have Scrivener, but sadly still using my Word. It just felt a little clunky to me, but I need to really get comfortable using it.
Morris wrote: "I hope to open up and do a sort of exchange of helpful ideas different authors use in editing or writing. I open up with this one...On whatever book I am working on, I save today's changes under ..."
Great advice, Morris. I do the same thing. I save each day's progress separately, keep all copies, and I save them in four different locations (PC hard drive, flashdrives, and cloud drives), plus paper copies, and I store them in different locations in case of fire. I will NOT lose my books.
Micah wrote: "One thing I would like to sort out, though, is some way to store, organize, and access data about specific writing projects.Like ideas and info on world creation. I have two separate worlds that ..."
I use Scrivener and it is amazing for keeping all the elements of the book together in one place. Photos, research, character sketches. plots, places, even the cover and front pages (copyright and title page.) I've found it immensely useful for keeping track of everything to do with my projects.
Support for Indie Authors
Books mentioned in this topic
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Volume 1 of 2 (other topics)The Silkworm (other topics)
The Cuckoo's Calling (other topics)
On whatever book I am working on, I save today's changes under a different name, say like TKAM_07/08/15. Tomorrow, when I save my changes, for example, it will be TKAM_07/09/15. I try to save all old copies in, say, a folder called Old TKAM, on both my jump and my hard drive. If I ever have a computer crash, and broken or lost jump drive, or document changes lost, I am never going to lose more than one day's work. I have had computer crashes, and broken and lost jump drives: Backup, backup, backup!
Morris