Versioning is a lifesaver

Hello lovelies,

My goal today is to seduce you with organization (which you would think is hilarious if you ever saw the state of my house).

This post is for those of us writing in Word, Google Docs, and any variation thereof, and who are still keeping things in folders. (I assume that fancier apps like Scrivener do this kind of thing for you, but I’ve honestly never used it.)

If you’re like this too, you might want to try versioning:

I’m a digital hoarder. When I’m about to start a new draft/revision of a book, I make a copy of the current draft and squirrel it away in an Archive folder so that I never lose it. Over time, this yielded me an Archive folder with over a dozen copies of my manuscript that I had no idea which was newer (unless I dug into details, and who has time for that?), which manuscript represented which change (is this the one I tried to make YA, or the one I tried and failed at 3rd POV?), or which plotting document went with which version. Chaos.

It took me maybe 5 or 6 books to start versioning my files, and I wish I’d started the first time I thought of it.

What I mean by versioning:

For the love of St. Google Drive, start numbering your current version of your manuscript and all its attendant files with the same version number. It can be as simple as adding a “1” to all files that go together, and then when you move to the next draft, set them all at 2.

If you want to be fancy, also make a Versioning document in your book’s main folder with a simple table or list that explains, for each version, what changes were made, like this. Add a date, if you want.

What documents to version:

the manuscript itself
beat sheets / plotting documents
reverse outlines
your file of cut pieces (you know you have one—I call mine “clippings”)
copies you’ve sent beta readers
queries and synopses (I can talk so much more on this)
anything that you might squirrel away a copy of, but also keep working on in a new form