How do you keep track of all your writing & publishing stuff

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K'Sennia Visitor
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How do you keep track of all your writing & publishing stuff Nov 27, 2018 23:43:13 GMT

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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Nov 27, 2018 23:43:13 GMT

I am probably the most unorganized person on the planet, but I've been working on it and slowly getting better over the last few years. I've had a lot of setbacks, but I'm better now than I was, and I still have a long way to go.

I have a 2 terrabyte (or is it 1t?) external harddrive that I use to store all my stuff, plus a bunch of flash drives that I mostly use for temp storage cos I always computer on my bed because I hate chairs. In order to use puter with xd plugged in I have to balance this ginornous bin lid on me lap. It's most uncomfortable, so I always try and switch off to a flash drive whenever I can. And then when FD gets full or I need something from XD the lid comes back out.

I have XD organized into different folders. my Video folder is and has almost always been pretty well organized. All my TV shows each has their own subfolder. Then there's a folder for movies. I just recently deleted a ton of movies for extra space. I did have that all nicely sorted into genre folders, and now well, I have one for Star Wars, anyway. I haven't redownloaded very many movies yet. Then I have a subfolder for my short films and documentaries. One subfolder there is for YouTube, and is divided again by youtubers. I use YT a lot for research. I like to copy/paste the comments sometimes, too. I should start keeping those inside the youtube folder. Right now they're in my word docs file which is always the largest mess and the bane of my existence.

I have a Babylon 5 Master file which has all the eppies that I ripped from the DVDs, ebook copies of all the books which I also own in paperback. A bunch of Youtube vids and forum threads and B5 related websites and pics and my fave Susan and Talia fanfics. Every once in a while I decide I don't want a B5 Master file, so I stick all the vids back in vids, the books in books, the podcasts in audio, etc. And then I miss it so I recreate it. Once I lost it and I was so devastated, but then windows backup saved me.

I also have an ebooks archive. I recently deleted all of my books. I had thousands. And now I'm slowly getting them back. I use calibre for my reading and I love how it automatically and neatly organizes everything by author. I just need to take the time to open all my books up in it. That is the easiest way I've found to organize my books.

I have a folder called My Publishing Portal, it used to be called published works but I lost that one forever, along with original copies of most of my book covers. I could redownload all of my bank statements and KDP and D2D statements, they each go in their own folder. And then I have a folder for published fiction and published nonfiction. Might need to start a new one for paperbacks. And then I've got one with all my cover photos. One called "pics I have the rights to" which is just all the pics I've taken that I could use for covers if I wanted. I have one for blurbs and author bios, but I've only got my aaro blake author bio and maybe two or three blurbs. I need to work on that. And then I have a subfolder for Book Reports reports.

I've also got an audio folder, subfolders by genre, one for music, and I'm quite proud - every song I've ever downloaded divided up by artist. That took me sooooo long to do, and I'm really proud of myself for not deleting it.

I've also got a folder for my webpages. Mostly all one jumble, but since I'm studying CPA right now I've got a separate CPA subfolder.

My Images folder has got thousands of unsorted pics that I like to think I'll use for inspiration.

I do have an email draft that has all of my login info sorted alphabetically. I use that one all the time, and it's very useful. I am a big fan of alphabetical sorting. (nods head) It's the easiest system to use.

So far I haven't managed to keep my word docs sorted. Because even though I have 10,000 copies of this one file, what if one of those has a word or a sentence that's not in the one I keep and I lose it forever? Then I tell myself, "that's stupid. Be normal." So I delete them all. Then I start to panic and miss them, so I run recuva and bring them all back.

Of course when I do go through and organize them all so that I can work on them, I always start to feel overwhelmed. I don't know what do do next, and organizing calms me and gives me something nonstressful to procrastinate with, so that's prolly why I can't get rid of them.

So that was really long, but I got a few good ideas out of it, and this is cheaper than therapy. Yoooooooo Hallooooo

What's your organization style/story? Got any tips?

While Faith Manages I'll be in the car.

robertlcollins
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Posts: 205

How do you keep track of all your writing & publishing stuff Nov 28, 2018 15:54:32 GMT K'Sennia Visitor likes this

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Post by robertlcollins on Nov 28, 2018 15:54:32 GMT

Here is how I'm organized:

I do have an external drive for media, mainly movies and TV shows. I do have to download two series in particular, Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Doctor Who. Not all MST3K is for sale, and when episodes are for sale they tend to be marked as movies rather than episodes of a TV series. Downloading allows me to change the metadata on the file so that iTunes sees them as episodes. With DW it's a little odder. The BBC classifies new Who as Seasons 1-11, while each classic Who story is its own season. Therefore I have to download to get them into proper order.

I only download ebooks onto my phone temporarily to read. If I do get a public domain book from, say Project Gutenberg, I'll download the file and put it in a folder on my laptop. I can then get the file onto my phone via iCloud. Then it becomes part of my Book app library.

For a long time I had my various documents in files here and there on whatever computer I had. Recently I moved everything into the Documents folder and organized accordingly. One folder is for writing; one for business documents; one for pictures; and so on, with I think maybe five folders total. I don't save all the files once I publish a book. I will save the file I used to create the ebook for upload and a jpg file of the cover. I do have the old epub and kindle files from when I was selling ebooks, but if I need a file to edit I'll just download the doc file from Smashwords, then add the edited file to the relevant folder (novels, collections, or specific series).

As far as blurbs go, I use the Notes app on my phone and laptop. I've also found that I can use the Notes app on my phone to scan documents, so that allowed me to get rid of the app I'd been using. (Same for my grocery lists and few recipes, BTW). Again, I don't save blurbs once a book is published since there are several stores where I can copy and paste.

My photos are on my laptop and in the Mac and iOS Photo apps. Everything is sorted into folders on the laptop and in the apps. Since quite a few of the pictures I've taken over the years are from various places in Kansas, I've organized those by county. There are a few I've used for cover images, so the organization helps me find them if I think about using others.

When I was writing nonfiction, I'd copy articles from microfilm, then cut out what I needed and paste them onto pieces of blank paper. I would then scan them as image files, separate out clippings when several where on a single side of a piece of paper, then name the file with the newspaper/source and the date. These went into specific book folders on my computer. Eventually I tossed the hard copies (except for some I donated here and there) and kept the image files. I hardly access them anymore, but I have them as files and in iCloud if I need them.

My first tip, relating to how I keep organized, is to figure out a system. Do you want all your pictures in one folder? Would you be okay with splitting them between a folder of personal pictures and those you want for writing? Do you want your writing organized by idea-current-complete? Novels & short stories? Fantasy and sci-fi? The goal ought to be to determine a system so that when you want to find something you can as quickly as you can.

My next tip is one you have your system, organize as you go. The sooner you get something new put in its place, I think the less you stress about getting it sorted and making it easy to find again.

You can allow yourself to get rid of what you don't want to keep. Example: I had a few story ideas that I'd plotted out, as a follow-up series to a series I'd just completed. But the more I thought about them, the more I realized that I was happy with how the series ended and didn't feel a need to expand it further. (Which, to be honest, I wasn't going to be doing with the new stories. There would be travel to a few new places, but the world itself wasn't going to progress like it had in the completed series.) So I deleted the files and plotted new stories in new universes. Start slow and small, maybe with a "trash folder" before you actually delete something. If you don't go back to it after a certain period, give yourself permission to delete it.

Hope this was helpful and interesting.

K'Sennia Visitor
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How do you keep track of all your writing & publishing stuff Nov 28, 2018 16:23:03 GMT

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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Nov 28, 2018 16:23:03 GMT

Thanks for sharing, robertlcollins, I love hearing how other peeps do things. I also like your idea-WIP-Completed order. It's nice and tidy. Right now I'm ignoring XD, and pretending I never have to look at it again.

While Faith Manages I'll be in the car.

dormouse
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Posts: 255

How do you keep track of all your writing & publishing stuff Nov 28, 2018 19:25:31 GMT K'Sennia Visitor likes this

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Post by dormouse on Nov 28, 2018 19:25:31 GMT

I have extensive external storage (SSDs & HDDs) and about 5TB or so of cloud storage (+ 'unlimited' except such a thing can't exist). I use backup programs with automatic routines to make sure there is sufficient redundancy that my risk of losing something important completely is very low.
I use iMatch for images and PaperPile for PDFs, documents & academic papers etc.

I do have folders and files but believe that they constitute an inherently inefficient and fragile system organisational system. They require initially designing a comprehensive filing system, and then always actively putting files away (if you can remember the system) and rarely changing your system. At least one of these usually breaks. Failures can be mitigated by maintaining an up-to-date search index; there are many programs to do that, but my experience is that they all impose a substantial load on your computer.

For my own writing, I have always found that programs that save to a database are more effective. They virtually all offer a folder hierarchy equivalent, a tag hierarchy and comprehensive search facilities. Most can also store files and/or links to files.

Journal/dating systems offer a more user friendly base for searching (we often know when even if we can't remember the name or where we put it). File dates are problematic because the OS can change those dates.

Last Edit: Nov 28, 2018 19:27:15 GMT by dormouse

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