Save Everything

Confession: I am a packrat.

Not bad enough that I need to see a specialist or anything, I promise. But I have problems throwing things away. I really do. I have written copies of stuff I wrote when I was 12 and typed copies of stuff when I wrote when I was 7. And don’t get me started on creative supplies. I have shoeboxes upon shoeboxes full of fabric and ribbon and string and beads and other random artsy stuff.

But the one thing that I packrat the most is files.

I save everything.

Don’t confuse that with I save all the time, no, I have had more than my share of not having saved and then your battery getting knocked out and losing everything. But I save almost everything I’ve ever written, even if I don’t like it. I’ve saved pretty much every piece of writing that Margaret’s shared with me.

I save scraps, ideas, projects that I want to work on, stuff I intend on never looking at again, first drafts, second drafts, diagrams that I’ve made of family trees and appearances, timelines… I save a lot of files. And I’m also slightly OCD about keeping them organized. I have lots of folders. As opposed to Margaret who just saves everything in one folder and Searches for a file when she wants it.

However, despite the fact that her computer is a mess file wise, our organization in terms of our novels and its various drafts are quite similar.

Moral of the story is save every draft you make.

One of the interesting things that you’ll find when you look at enough articles and books about editing/revising your novel, is that almost every one of them will say something about saving your drafts as you go along. The one that I have on hand is an excerpt from Gail Carson Lavine’s, author of one of my absolute favorite children’s books of all time Ella Enchanted among other children’s books, Writing Magic:

“I, too, save everything I write, so in the computer file for each of my books or short stories I keep a document titled “Extra” and I park my peerless but useless prose there. Extra is my treasure lode. I can mind it, and so can biographers!

Here’s a strategy I use in writing a first draft or in revising when I take my story down a path I’m not sure of and I don’t want to lose what I already have.

On my computer I save my story in its old version. Say I save it as “elves 1”. Then I save it again as “elves 2”. I go to the spot where my alteration begins and start writing. If all goes well, I won’t need the old version but if my new idea fizzles I haven’t lost anything. By the time I’ve finished writing and revising a book, I may be up to “elves 50”!”

I do something similar, though I just have everything to do with my book under the folder “Beguiled” and my successive drafts are Master, Master 2, Master 3. That’s the one I’m working on right now.

Every time I need to make a major change, and I’m going to continue working on the vein for a while, I create a new draft. That way I can organize my drafts by the major changes. Master was the first draft. Master 2 was just general edits (editing, not revising () Shame on me.) Master 3 I removed the entire first eight chapters of my novel because it was more or less all backstory. Once I feel comfortable enough with the beginning without those chapters and how the backstory is spread throughout the chapter I plan on making a Master 4 and giving my antagonist a serious revamp.

Separating drafts by tasks helps me to just keep things straight in my head. It also helps me focus on one task at a hand, which no matter how good you might be at multi-tasking, has been scientifically proven to be the best way to do work.

That doesn’t have to be the way you do it. Like just about everything on this blog, what’s important is figuring out what works for you. That works for me. But you really should save different drafts. It helps you to see how you’re progressing. Sometimes you’ll do something to change it and not like it and if you saved over the original or earlier drafts you can’t go back. Or sometimes you find ideas in your earlier drafts. That’s happened to me more than enough times.

Or if there’s something you liked that you had to get rid of later because it just didn’t work, if you have it saved you can use it for later.

And while we’re on the topic I would also tell you to not just save drafts, but get in the habit of saving everything. Those random scraps that you think of can be seriously useful one day. They can turn into a lot more than you think they might. And the great thing about computers is that it’s not that big of a deal to save them.

When it turns into a three inch thick pile of paper in the drawer of your bedside table and you’re supposed to be moving though…