đ The Rank and File of Manuscripts
Placing (and naming) your work files so you can play and revise without worry
If you ask any writer what their biggest work-related nightmare would be, I imagine one of the writerdom-wide âbiggiesâ is losing (or losing access to) oneâs digital files1. But a lesser (yet no less true) nightmare is organizing those filesâto be able to easily find what you are looking for, even if itâs been years (YEARS!) since you last thought of this or that story.
I donât purport to have a system that would work for anyone else, but I can tell you how I manage this now that Iâve been at it for a few years.
Here are the decisions youâll (probably) want to make if you are tackling this for the first time, along with what I decided.
First decision: where will you keep your writing files?
The biggest bang for your buck in terms of organizing is always deciding what, exactly, you are even organizing. I try to get all my paper files into digital format as soon as possible. Once there, I have a folder on my desktop called Catalogue RaisonnĂ© where everything Iâve created, whether art or written word, lives2. Just making this one change about 10 years ago has been super helpful for me because if a file is something I havenât createdâsuch as craft advice or a .PDF someone else sent meâit can go elsewhere (probably just into Evernote). Anything in this folder is one of my babies; as Gollum would half-hiss, Catalogue RaisonnĂ© is my preciousss.
Second decision: how will you sort your files?
Again, for me (and #ymmv), I do a lot of different kinds of creative projectsânot all of them professionally. So, within my Catalogue RaisonnĂ© folder are sub-folders like âWriting,â âIllustration and Design,â and âHome and Familyâ (among others), each subdivided as necessary. Writing, for example, is further broken down into sub-folders like âAdult,â âChildhood Writingâ (I wish I had so much more in there, but moving every few years means most of my âI wrote this as a kidâ stuff got trashed), and âChildrenâs Books.â Childrenâs Books, of course, is further broken down by genre: âBoard Books,â âPicture Booksâ (a colossal folder!), âMiddle Grade,â âPoetry,â and all that good stuff. Overwrought? (I donât think so?) Everything is a few clicks away, and I have a shortcut to Childrenâs Books also saved on my desktop, so nothing feels hard to find. If this doesnât work for you, the key is figuring out what DOESâand sticking with it long enough that it becomes second nature.
Final decision: how will you name your files?
This is the part was the hardest for meânot because I donât know what I *should* do (and mostly want to do!), but because itâs so easy to, at the moment, put off doing the two-second thing I need to do and then regret it later. Good news/bad news: Microsoft Word makes it so easy to save many versions of the same document! This is cumbersome for writers because so often, the most recent version of a manuscript is not, in fact, the âbestâ one. I used to sort by âdate modified,ââbut after losing a lot of productivity working on old versions of things (and not immediately realizing it), I now treat my files differently.
For old files that Iâm working onâthe first thing I do right now, before I even open the file to work it, is make a copy of the file within the folder and rename it with todayâs date at the end. So, for example, if Iâm working on Thereâs Something Odd About the Babysitter, Iâll make a copy of the latest version (let's pretend it was âThereâs Something Odd About the Babysitter - 01.01.2023â) and rename it with todayâs dateâsay, Thereâs Something Odd About the Babysitter - this month.today's date.this year). Why bother? Because I have learned how freeing this is. If I start in with major changes and donât like where I end upâI always have the previous version to go back to. And the date that I add is way more reliable than âdate modified,â as Word tends to âupdateâ a file date for all kinds of reasonsâsometimes as simple as opening a file to copy a line that I want back in the current versionâthat I have no control over. By setting my own date, I can organize by File name, and always easily and reliably find where I last left off.
For newly-created files, I either create a subfolder with the name of the story and use thatâor if itâs less far along, I throw it into an all-purpose holding pen for half-formed writings called Grab Bag. Easy-peasy (mostly). If you want to know more about thisâI donât know, maybe you are as manuscript-crazy as I am?âyou can read all about that here.
This may all feel like overthinkingâbut I truly believe if you think of a new revision as a playful experiment that you can easily revert back from, it becomes far more freeing to try new (or even outlandish!) things. While it takes a tiny bit of maintenance to keep going (mostly remembering to copy a file before opening it on a new day), I truly believe this system saves me hours a weekâand takes so much of the frustration out of finding things. Still, you do do! Whatever you do (or donât), if itâs workingâthen you are doing SOMETHING right!
Let me know if you have a different way of handling the hundreds (if not thousands) of files that writers amass!
Your slowly filing-out friend,
Elayne
My posts are always free, but my focus isn't; if you found this post interesting or useful, please consider âĄ' ing it so I know. Thank you!
<Lecture alert!> Perhaps the most critical part of this post is a reminder to back up regularlyâand securely! If you donât know if your files are being properly backed up, make it a priority to find out and get that happening. I have been happy with Windows Backup, but you may want to backup to a hard drive. Regardless of what method you choose, itâs important to regularly check that your backups are working correctly and havenât run out of space or stopped for any reason. </end of lecture>
Okay, thatâs not ENTIRELY true. I keep all my photography in Google Photos (which I am happy with).