Am I alone? How many versions of a story do you write? I say one’s enough.

I do use the first draft to say what I want to say but I certainly don't edit as I go. I'd never finish anything if I kept going back to fiddle with it.

I have a first draft and an edited version. That's it.

*Write first draft.
*Edit it.

One's the norm, as far as I'm aware.

I've had issues before where I tried out multiple beginnings before I found one that felt "right." Re-writing the whole thing though...nope.

... gotta love the way that some people find a strategy that works for them and then come out and declare that that's the way that everybody should go about it, and all other approaches are wrong ;-) Seriously, there are many different approaches to everything in life and no one right way to go about it. We're all individuals and must find the method that works best for us, with tips (and not dictates) from others.

The Backward OX said:

I put it to you that you should spend the time needed on a first draft to say what you want to say, in other words edit as you go, then over an extended period go back occasionally and polish it up by the simple expedient of changing just a word here, a sentence there, and be done with it.

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I revise my first draft as I go along, but I always find problems afterwards. Not prose/editing problems. Those are easy to fix. But prose is only one part--and a small one--of a novel. The story is the most important thing, and it's also much harder to get right in a first draft. Sometimes the problems aren't always obvious during the writing, and may not even be apparent until after it's done. Or after it's sat. It's also possible that I might not see it at all, and then when I write the query or the synopsis, then I discover that something doesn't quite work right.

Give it to a beta, and wave to it goodbye.

I’m damn sure if I found myself attempting to compare three or four or eight versions of the same story, I’d be a candidate for the rubber room.

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This is a first draft we're talking about? I have at least 3 versions in my head as I'm typing this

There are good reasons to get rid of a huge chunk of text if you do A) next, but if you do B) you'd keep that passage, etc.

I have those all over the place in my first drafts. I'm not even talking about plot, necessarily. Usually mine boil down to pacing, tension, a choice of dialogue vs. narrative, and similar things.

There is no question of deciding which version to submit! It has to be the finished version. But when there is a lot of scene-cutting and other drastic changes, I want backup copies so that I can go back to a less hacked version for a reality check or to recover a scene that I shouldn't have taken out. One can write oneself into a corner on a bad editing day. It's good to have those escape hatches. Also, it's a fun form of self-torture to look back and see how bad some of the early versions were

If a document is read-only, you can't edit it. What you could do is CTRL-A and 'copy' then paste it into another document.

I use the same method as Alleycat.

Day one -- start document "Title"; type as much as possible. Save to computer and CD-R.

Day Two-- do more work on "Title". Save to computer, and save to CD-R as Title02

This pattern keeps up until around Day 17 or so when I realize that something I used on Day 6, but trashed on Day 7 would have worked better. Go to CD-R, find Title 06, copy and paste the section I want from that version into current "Title" document. At the end of the day, save "Title" to computer, and save to CD-R as Title17.

There's only ONE version of the manuscript, but by saving each day's progress as its own document on a CD-R, you never run into the situation where you wish you hadn't trashed something that would work in a new part of the MS.

You must go through a shitload of CDs. What a waste. *tut tut*

I shake my head at you.

scarletpeaches said:

You must go through a shitload of CDs. What a waste. *tut tut*

I shake my head at you.

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I'm guessing that they use re writable CD-RWs.

And it's much easier to backup to pen/flash/thumb drives these days.

The Backward OX said:

The thing is, it shouldn't have said Read-Only. This is a CD-RW we're talking about.

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I don't think it's possible to edit a file if you open it directly from a CD-RW. You should copy the file onto your desktop and open it from there. You should be able to edit it then. Afterwards, you can copy back to the CD RW. I haven't tried this (been using flash drives for the past 2 years) but I think it will work.

The Backward OX said:

The thing is, it shouldn't have said Read-Only. This is a CD-RW we're talking about.

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You have to copy the document onto your hard drive, work on it from there, save it, then copy it back onto the CD.

Echoing what Darzian said. I've had this laptop since last October, November, I think...and I've never used the DVD burner. I save everything onto pen drives and SD cards.

Darzian said:

I'm guessing that they use re writable CD-RWs.

And it's much easier to backup to pen/flash/thumb drives these days.

Click to expand...

I use a flash drive, but the CD-R is my "just in case" back-up. I started using it after my flash drive committed suicide one chapter from "The End" on my last WIP.

Remember folks. Paranoia is good. Never back up in just one place.

If you can type or write pretty fast, it may actually be faster to rewrite whole sentences than it is to delete and copy and paste all the words back and forth anyhow.

scarletpeaches said:

Echoing what Darzian said. I've had this laptop since last October, November, I think...and I've never used the DVD burner. I save everything onto pen drives and SD cards.

Click to expand...

Off topic (sort of).

Do NOT trust flash/pen/thumb drives! My day job is a computer tech. At least once a week I have someone come to me with a corrupted pen drive begging me to recover the data. There are utilities, but I've had better luck recovering data from floppies.

And those small drives are so easy to break!

If your ISP gives you web space, ftp your work their servers. It will be backed up to tape.

A portable hard drive is good, as long as you don't bang it around too much.

CDs are the cheapest way to have safe data, but store them carefully.

The Backward OX said:

Elsewhere I questioned methods of editing backups, and found a whole bunch of people saying that instead of editing, they rewrite the whole damn thing, maybe a number of times, and then keep a complete copy of every version.

To my mind, that way lies madness.

None of you would ever be able to decide which version is the one to submit.

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Utter nonsense. I've commented in the other thread, and you are completely missing the point. You didn't have the courtesy to link that thread for the edification of others, so I'll do it for you:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=81

But, hey, you asked the question there, you got a lot of answers, all of them as far as I could see saying essentially the same thing, and you now choose to ignore them, insult the intelligence of everybody who responded, and start a new thread on the same issue here. There's a name for such behavior here, TROLL.

Write your rough draft, send the damn thing wherever you intend to submit it, and let us know how that works out for ya.

caw