Are first and multiple drafts really well necesssary?

I also keep printouts. Nearly unreadable printouts--minimum margins, 7 point type, double sided--but in the case of a complete data loss I can spend a few days typing, possibly with a magnifying glass.

Hm. I should go do a printout.

 

You've achieved a nice balance between informative dialogue and narrative. I feel like I'm tripping.

 

I got my tense wong

 

Now you're starting to sound like Elmer Fudd. Wabbits are all wong for my gawden.

 

Wascally wabbits!

 

I also do all of the above (except the Cloud) and I also carry a couple of flash drives (with alternate backups) with me on my key ring, so in case the house burns down while I'm away (or my computer gets stolen) hey, I've still got two copies of my story! Paranoid? You betcha. The emails are good as well, because they are independent of my computer setup. I can access them from any computer anywhere. I just sign in to BT, and I've got my stuff. And, like @ChickenFreak, I keep a current printout. I used to keep old draft printouts as well, but they took up too much room. So I just have one now.

Here's the thing. Yeah, very old drafts are probably never going to get used. But they are FUN. Go back and read some of them later on, and they'll give you quite a boost. You can see how far you've come, and how much you've improved as a writer. The notion that you can't fix a broken story, or that you aren't learning anything if you keep working on the same piece for a while is, frankly, bunkum. Of course you can, and of course you are. Don't believe me? Check out your oldest drafts and compare them to the newest ones. I bet dollars to donuts that you'll be able to see the difference.

 

That's because the emails are in the cloud (at least what I think the cloud is).

 

Yeah. I just don't have a Cloud account. Can't be arsed.

 

I don't have a cloud account either. "Cloud" is a generic term for me, meaning "out there somewhere" external to any device and can be accessed from any computer. Dropbox is a good example of stuff stored on the cloud or any email account.

 

She stopped to examine a freshly healed scar and let her finger trace it along his ribs and under his arm. Her hands were warm against the chill of the water. He reached around, grabbed her hand, and held it to his thick chest, breathing in her body heat. Her fingers toyed with his chest hair.
"You'll get my tunic wet," she said, meeting his gaze and smiling.
"Hopefully that wont be the only thing," he said and pulled her towards him...

 

Nice Viking, proper.

...although

"You'll get my tunic wet," she said, meeting his gaze and smiling.
"Hopefully that wont be the only thing," he said and pulled her towards him...
'Excuse me?'
'Your fanny, nice and sloppy...'
'Ew.'
Lady Miranda drew the blankets to her cleavage, and she reached an arm toward her lambswool knickers. Perhaps Dobkin the Viking was not the regal Viking of her fantasy and only a coarse and barbarian fellow..? she considered...

 

I think The Cloud is fine for people who shift back and forth between devices all the time, but I don't. I don't have a Smartphone, and while we have a MacBook Air, I hardly ever use it. I do all my writing at my desktop computer, and I've been backing up my work in various ways for a long time—before laptops, Smartphones, tablets and The Cloud were 'invented.'

Right now we have the best of all options. It's called 'variety.' Back in the day when only paper (handwritten or typed) copies were available, I imagine people lost their work quite often. Either literally 'lost' it, or it got damaged in some way. Nowadays we can back up our work on inexpensive flash drives, secondary hard drives, keep a paper copy, and use the 'Cloud' which includes email, etc. People STILL lose work, but maybe not as often as in the days of paper only. The big advantage at the moment is the variety of copy methods, and our ability to choose which ones work best for us.

I don't want to lose that variety to The Cloud, which I can feel we're being pushed towards. I am not looking forward to the day when everything we do and own has to be uploaded and downloaded from the internet, and everything we produce is at the mercy of some faceless entity 'out there' that controls what we keep and what we lose. Hell, Sci-Fi has been written about that sort of scenario ...and it's never good.

 

One day you are going to show up to buy a new laptop, get home all happy, and realize that there aren't any USB ports. Everything will be integrated blue tooth and you will have to use the matching gear which gets upgraded every three years.

 

It's like those stupid Macs and Chrome books that have one bloody USB C connector that's literally the only way you can plug anything, including the charger, into the dang thing.

 

That's why I like my ASUS so much. I have a monitor, speakers, mouse, and keyboard I can plug into it and use like a budget desktop. I do most of my writing on it.

 

My best guess is, if you want to save a bunch of time, better get on with those drafts. Once you are happy with the nonsense you have written down for your eyes only, start the serious writing.

 

That's already starting to happen. I think we're losing the plot, to be honest.

 

I use a cloud. It sucks if your computer breaks and you lose almost everything. I had that happen twice. I keep my novel in a cloud, but I also download it to my computer regularly. I'm too far along that losing it would be devastating. I also like that the cloud saves as I write. You won't even lose a word. I find the combination of cloud and saved to my computer is what works best for me. I don't write on multiple devices. I use the cloud completely for the protection it offers. Plus, I can download files as just about anything which I can't do on my computer. I don't have Word. Can you believe it a writer without Word. I just haven't been able to afford it. And my computer now is acting up a bit. I am going to need a new computer before I need or get Word.

 

I have heard horror stories about people losing information in the Cloud as well. So as many ways to back up as you can access is probably the best way to go. Sending your work as emails to yourself (or to somebody else for safekeeping) can also work. Okay, so it's technically the 'cloud' but at least it's a different cloud!

Me? I always keep a printout of the latest stuff, and certainly use flash drives. You're right to not trust your computer. And files CAN get corrupted ...as I discovered. I've never lost work, but I did need to re-key in a chapter once (a long time ago) because the file itself got corrupted and the corruption translated to all my backups. That's when I was SO glad I had the paper printout. And I also learned then to back up in stages. In other words, back up today's work on one flash drive, tomorrow's work on a different drive, and etc. Rotate, in other words. It's not foolproof, but at least you have a fighting chance of getting most of the work back if a file goes wonky. That way you should have a couple of copies of previous versions (dated, of course.)

I honestly think you can't be too careful. I'd say if your backup system gets too complicated and you start screwing it up, that's probably when to stop adding devices and locations. But as long as you keep a system going, and stay on top of it, you should be pretty safe.

 

No, but if someone has successfully run the gauntlet of traditional publishing it is a rather clear indicator that they are NOT a novice. The answer to the question (and you didn't give one) may not be dispositive, but could be informative.

 

I'm not sure which question you're referring to.

And then we've got things like Twilight, so I guess there're outliers at either end.

 

I begin with the assumption that when someone asks if it's "okay" to do something in the field of writing, they mean to seek traditional publication. In the US, at least, that means running the agent-querying gauntlet. The average agent receives over 10,000 e-mailed queries per year. According to Publisher's Marketplace, the TOP agent in the past year for debut authors, Claudia Ballard, sold 6 books. The average for the top 100 on PM is probably 2. Many only have sold 1. So, for each agent, you're trying to be one or two out of 10,000. Each agent, therefore, is looking for something specific that they can sell to an editor they've already worked with. Writer's conferences, pitch conferences, and Twitter events are all about trying to get the top of an agent's in-box just for a slight edge. When they read your query and sample pages, they want to see something they can sell. Now. Every time you write something just because Stephen King does it (or Tom Clancy or Agatha Christie or James Michener or Charles Dickens) but which is considered out-of-style today, you are making it that much easier for the agent to cry, "Next!" and move on to someone else's query. An agent acquaintance of mine (and I don't claim to have met all that many) who does a lot of workshops likes to say, "For a first-timer, if you must make an exception (to an accepted rule), limit yourself to one for the entire ms."

I'm on my second go-round through this process. I gave up on the first one when I realized it needed more work to be publishable and I already had a new idea that I was excited about. I started querying in August. Thus far, an agent and a publisher (through #PitMad) have asked for fulls. A second agent also had asked for a full, but quickly decided it wasn't for him because it "wasn't cutting-edge enough" (ironically, I had an editor at a Pitch Conference tell me she thought it was interesting, but too cutting-edge for her company's readership, which was based primarily in the US Midwest). I don't claim to know everything there is to know about the traditional publishing process. But I do know something, and I share from that experience. Someone who has not done the digging I've done, who doesn't have that knowledge, is giving less-informed advice. It's fine to say, "I'll decide for myself whose advice to follow", but I have to ask...based upon what? I mean, there's a reason you asked for the advice in the first place.

One last point. It is possible that the avid reader or aspiring artist understands as much about the elements of storytelling as the studied or accomplished author, but storytelling isn't the issue, here. The issue is story selling. What sold in 1926 or 1946 or 1965 is not necessarily going to sell, now. Back then, publishing houses were small concerns, often family-owned. Editors often took on promising young writers and nursed them through a couple of poor-selling books to allow them to develop. Those days are long gone. Today, they want instant success.

If your goal is not traditional publishing, then, in the immortal words of Emily Litella, never mind.

 

So soon you forget, eh?

I had asked if you were a published author or not.

 

Oh, dear. I just realized I didn't ask you that question. My apologies.

 

Ah, I was confused considering I thought I answered that in the post you quoted.