the scrivening, part 3: a work in progress

[ecmyers]

My friend Kris, a happy user of Scrivener, once told me that the way I organized my novel was like “a low-tech version” of the software. Now that I’ve played with some of its features, I know she was absolutely right.

So this is how I normally write my novels, which may sound quite bizarre to some of you:

• Every chapter gets its own folder, eg.

Comments

[jethrien]

You're significantly more organized to begin with than I am, and I really should be taking notes. I've got everything in one big file, which is really only useful for feeling accomplished by checking the word count over and over. I've got seperate files for outlines, research, and character notes. I tend to save everything under a new name with the day's date once a week or so, so I have an archive of older versions. It's not really a very good system.

[ecmyers]

As long as the system works for you, the system is good enough :) I neglected to mention that in addition to the chapter word counts I listed in my table, I did keep a running tally of the total word count of the manuscript at the top of the grid--so I was just as interested in tracking that as a marker of my progress. :)

I assume you're also saving copies on other computers or hard drives? I think that regular backups to secondary storage should be a part of everyone's workflow, regardless of how they organize and work on the actual words.

[jethrien]

It's on two different computers, an external harddrive, and a thumb drive. And a couple older versions are in Gmail.

[kaiweilau]

That's a good idea about making a table with chapter notes. I'll have to experiment. BTW, I love Scrivener and have for YEARS. :)

[ecmyers]

I don't think you'd need that table if you're already using Scrivener, but let me know if it helps your process any. I have a lot of catching up to do with incorporating the program into my writing routine.