My novel, Milk Carton People, released last week at Eternal Press. After numerous editing sessions and release celebrations, I have hit the post published “What do I work on, now?”
I have things spread over at least three laptops, two retired, two laptops, one in ICU when I need to scrape something out of it and probably a dozen USB drives.
It is time to dust off some of those projects in search of a seed, plotline, character or even a very rich scene that could become my next novel.
It has taken two days and repeated trips to the old laptop in search of oddly named files in equally odd formats. The second task is dragging them to this laptop and figuring out what program to use when opening them. The final step is to decide if the file I finally opened is a complete file or what stage of revision it was in when I last worked on it.
I’ve asked many writers for tips on how to name and store a work in progress. There are some very organized writers out there and I am not among them. I know this because I am finding NaNo manuscripts done in 2008 and 2009 named week 1, week 2, week 3… you get it. My attempt at becoming organized is a failure.
I’m still interested in learning a good way to file my projects and I know I am not the only writer with this issue, so leave a comment. What works for you?
The first question hasn’t changed, though. What do I work on, now?
Do I sound like I’m complaining? I’m actually quite happy to have a second novel published and I am very thankful to Kim Richards Gilchrist for making it reality.
I think I have narrowed it down to a wine drinking character who works in a doctor’s office or a very unlikable car thief and murderer. Maybe, I can let them meet. Oh, it is good to be a writer.
Till next time, don’t touch anything sharp and if you don’t watch I’ll write you into my next story!
What do I work on, now? And how do I organize my writing projects?