How do you save your manuscript?

[IrishScribbler]

Full document on my hard drive, USB drive, and in email.

I also currently have a hard copy, since I'm doing some editing.

 

[Prawn]

One file, backed up daily to my e-mail account, and weekly to a thumb drive and then to my computer at work.

 

[Pagey's_Girl]

I tried that "one big file" approach with one WIP, and I really didn't like it. I prefer to break the chapters into individual files.

 

[infinitus_kaze]

For my first book I wrote the entire thing in one document, but it became troublesome during the editing process so on my current book I've changed to saving each chapter as it's own document. Once I've finished the editing I will put the chapters together into a large document. Having both the chapter documents and entire manuscript document can be convenient for content submissions where someone might want the whole manuscript or the first two chapters plus the final chapter. I have easy access to print out whichever chapters I need or the manuscript in its entirety.

 

[Raphee]

I also email to my hotmail account. USB also done.

 

[Shadow_Ferret]

One document, using Document Map in Word to make it easy to jump from chapter to chapter.

Yes, this is how I do it now, once I discovered the Document Map feature. I first started out saving them as seperate chapters, but that was because I'd take them to work on a floppy and it could only hold a few chapters at a time, trying to fit the whole novel on a single floppy was impossible.

Then I discovered that I was using Word's "allow fast saves" option. Once I clicked that off the whole document shrank to a manageable size and I could fit the whole manuscript on a floppy.

Keeping them all as seperate chapters was a pain if I wanted to do a search of any kind because I'd have to do several seperate searches through each chapter. Word's book feature, where you can tie everything up in a "master" document was worthless and a pain in the neck.

So I went to one large file and happily use Document Map.