Aliya S. King

Have you ever written a story and had to do several edits and you get all mixed up with which file is the original and which is the edit and which is the second edit.

It can be a hot mess.

I never really came up with a system to keep my different versions in order. (I’d love to hear from my writer-friends on how they do it)

I got a rude awakening with the Faith book.

When it was time to go through edits, I would talk to her on the phone at Starbucks, make changes. Save the file. Go home, open the file, work on it some more. Save again, maybe under a different name to be sure it was saved properly.

And on and on. Until I had too many versions.

And then, I opened an earlier version and started making changes to that one.

Not good.

There is one tiny mistake in the book right now that would have been caught had I been more careful about the different versions I worked in.

(Um, Faith, if you’re reading this, I sent in a correction for the paperback edition…. )

Now, I know better.

I have i-disk.

It’s an online storage system offered by Mac. Although I’m sure there are plenty of options.

The Frank Lucas book is ONLY stored on my Idisk. And it keep the same name no matter what. Because I know it will always be on my i-disk, which I can access from any computer in the whole wide world.

There are only two versions. The version I submitted back in December. And the edited version I’m working on right now. That’s IT.

No more loading the book onto a mini hardrive and then reloading it on different computers. And renaming it. And getting all confused.

I have a cute little purple icon on my desktop for my i-disk. And there, all my important files live. And even if I find myself in a meeting and I’ve forgotten my proposal or paperwork, voila! I can produce it anywhere.

I can also give other people access to my I-disk. So, for example, I can make Del, my assistant, a user. And then he can just dip in and get my clips and make copies for me to send out to an editor. It’s his favorite thing to do. Right Del?

I-Disk. It’s your friend.

This entry was posted on April 1, 2009 at 11:23 am and is filed under Blogorama, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.