Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Question regarding bits and pieces

This is topic Question regarding bits and pieces in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Jericho (Member # 8073) on :

When I write I keep an appendix at the end of the document I name "The Dead Letter Office". When rewriting or editing I grab sections or sentences I think are worth keeping and cut and paste them there. A lot of stuff just gets rewritten or discarded. I'm curious as to how others deal with their rewriting and editing.

Posted by debhoag (Member # 5493) on :

i do pretty much the same thing. If it's a really large file, I cut and paste into a second file. I don't trash anything until I'm completely done, and I usually keep the cut and paste file, just in case.

Of course, several times, I have sent out the completed file, along with all the junk fragments at the end. Just for crits, though. I've never sent one for submission like that (that I know of).

Posted by TaleSpinner (Member # 5638) on :

Each revision gets its own file. Each file name is the title of the story and a revision number, for example, 'myStory-1.2.doc'. All the older revisions are kept in a folder called 'archive', just in case fragments of them are needed.

Cheers,
Pat

Posted by AWSullivan (Member # 8059) on :

quote:
Each revision gets its own file. Each file name is the title of the story and a revision number, for example, 'myStory-1.2.doc'. All the older revisions are kept in a folder called 'archive', just in case fragments of them are needed.

Same exact system.

Anthony

Posted by Jericho (Member # 8073) on :

So, am I to assume from TaleSpinner and AWSullivan that you can keep every revision separate?

I cannot reread anything I've written without changing this or that to some degree. To save every version would end up with a ridiculous amount of files.

Is there a discipline I am missing as far as rereading and editing that most folks follow?

Posted by Grant John (Member # 5993) on :

I print out the entire thing, then start a new file and then re-write it into the new file. This is probably more important for me because I started writing the first draft of my WIP in 2000, so I find that I will actually put things better using the skills I have learnt over the last 8 years of practice. Sometimes I will almost type word for word, sometimes I will just read then write the scene as I would now write it. Sometimes I will mark a page that there is a part of a scene that I like, but I am scrapping the rest (much is completely scraped because it is what a 15 year-old thought was good plotting idea rather than 23 year-year-old has learnt is good plotting.)

Not sure if anyone else writes like this, but I assume this is how writers used to do it before we started using computers,

Grant

PS I used to hand write all first drafts and then re-write as I put them on computer, but decided I was needlessly killing trees as these days I basically go no where without a laptop.

Posted by mikemunsil (Member # 2109) on :

quote:
So, am I to assume from TaleSpinner and AWSullivan that you can keep every revision separate?
I cannot reread anything I've written without changing this or that to some degree. To save every version would end up with a ridiculous amount of files.
...

I use a wiki once I get past first draft. I also change things constantly. The wiki handles all the revisions for me automagically, and makes them all available at a moment's notice.

Since it only costs me $10/month to have my own website, and only took several hours to learn enough to make Dokuwiki work (the wiki I use), I feel that the wiki is the way to go, as long as I back up on a frequent basis, which I do.

Here's a link to Dokuwiki: http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:dokuwiki

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I usually write, print out, then rewrite from the printout. (I can rewrite on the printout but rarely do so these days.) It's my notion that this forces me to reconsider every word and sentence as I go along, as well as adding bits of business along the way.

Once I revise, I just cut and add, add and cut, and once it's cut or rewritten, that's the end of it for me. I don't bother saving little bits along the way.

I make notes right in the rough draft, though, usually putting something in boldface and brackets, so it stands out when I revise it. Usually it's something like [check this out---do they do this?] I had a lot of that in my last novel, ostensibly set in 1947, with little reminders to check on how things were actually done in 1947. (It was easy to remember that people didn't have cell phones or computers...it was harder to find out things like what kind of home hair coloring kit, if any, you had to use.)

(I'd'a put my boldface note in boldface, but I forget how.)