You sound like the type of person who should carry a sketchbook. Mine was an address book, but it holds 8.5 x 5.5 and I have a hole-punch that works with it. I could also get lined inserts. My writing directory.. for a proper story I was working on, each chapter or block had a three-digit number, minor revisions saw the old stuff stuck into a table, major revisions had a copy stuck into an "old drafts" folder and those hopefully would retain the last-edited date.
I just group everything by relevance. Every story has its own folder containing the actual story and another folder containing any supporting material, such as profiles or maps if applicable. Every group of stories that are related will be in a folder with a codename related to all of them. For example, three stories taking place on the same continent but in different times will be grouped together in one folder named after the common continent for reference. All other works, such as poetry and short stories have their own generic folders since I do not do these often. Everything is in one folder called, "Manuscripts."
First directory is a few saga or story folders, as well as Short Stories, Poetry, Songs, etc. My current novel I then split into World, Current Draft, Old Drafts and Characters. I've changed my process since then, though, so now, rather than make full drafts of the whole story, each current chapter has its own subfolder so I can draft any chapter as many times as I want without feeling obligated to draft everything else to the same extent. Also, I can then rip them apart into scenes if I need to, or I can just copy-paste and redraft. I number my drafts. Back-ups of my portfolio are dated and kept on a memory stick. I also date the files in the headers so I know when they were last drafted. Any extraneous stuff I keep in the same place in case I need it. For me, icons have been really important. My stories and other works have appropriate icons which personalise my space and make it feel more creative and less bland. I also use icons to mark out my chapters based on how complete they are, so, when I sit down to write, I can see what I feel like tackling that day and how well I am progressing. Also, if I need to make notes, I make a Notepad document and leave it in the chapter file for reference. Writing this, it turns out I am way more file efficient than I ever would have expected of myself, haha. I feel organised. This is RARE. Only for the chapters, though, because BY GOD is the World folder a mess. So many ancient story concepts in there, but I always worry I'll just end up using reorganising that folder as a way of procrastinating from actual writing so I don't want to even go there.
To anybody else, my writing file probably looks like a mess. But I know right where everything is. Most of the time, anyways. In fact, if the police saw my file, they might have a few questions for me. I have a folder called Suicide Notes. A couple of them are written from the perspective of a character. But I have others that were written by me at different times in my life. I was not actually contemplating suicide when I wrote most of them. I've come to approach the suicide note thing as something of a writing exercise. I also have other documents that are dedicated to such things as how one might get away with murder, how to properly rob a bank, and how to make homemade explosives. None of this will ever help me in the world. I don't think I could ever murder anybody. At least, I couldn't plan to. It would probably have to be some spur of the moment, self-defense scenario or something. I have no intentions of robbing a bank and explosives make me nervous because, well, I'm accident prone. But nevertheless, I have notes on all of this crazy stuff. Why? Because I'm a writer. I sure hope that answer would suffice in a court of law, too.
I have four "Writing"-folders at different locations (desktop, laptop, Dropbox and USB-stick) and I have no idea what's in three of them... In the folder on my USB (my main folder) I keep one .scriv-folder for each project. All research and such are included through Scrivener's organisational features. And then I have one WIP that is neither in a folder nor a file; it's in a notebook.
I have only been writing for 6 months but I use a program that lets me use sticky notes (not them yellow things) and list them all on the top or side of the page, I have then a list like Notes, places, chapter 1 to 18+, it is also a word processor and now I can put a picture in and the writing raps around, but I expect this is old hat to you all. I am only a beginner and still finding my way round the writing scene. I would tell you the program and there is a free cut down version to have a go of, but I am not sure if I can say, please let me know?
My folders are: 2014 Published, 2015 Published, etc. - within each folder, each book gets a separate folder Accepted and in Editing - again, separate folder for each book inside this folder Misc. Promo - mostly doc files - interviews, guest blog posts, etc. Submitted to Pub - again, separate folders for each book Unfinished - folder for each project, including one titled "Rough Ideas" Website - graphics, backup files, etc. With Agent - folder for each project, but generally only one folder here at a time It's pretty simple, but it works, I think. All backed up to external hard drive occasionally, and all auto-synched to Dropbox, of course!
A bloody mess, I'm really disorganised. I've got one big folder with everything in and my main story has bits all over the place. I've got some chapters and plans in email attachments, a few bits on my work computer in a folder named 'random'. Sometimes I find a file and can't for the life of me remember what it's supposed to be. As a teenager I saved everything onto floppy discs. Massive fail. Could do with something like Scrivener, at least for my main piece, but had never heard of it before I joined this forum.
Naming software is not a problem (e.g. both I and Wreybies mentioned Scrivener in our posts in this thread), so go ahead if you wish.
The link is http://www.splinterware.com/ The free version has no time limit but is the cut down version but will give you an idea. I have go the professional one but did use the free one for about a year. It is a diary but if for book writing there is 2 modes, turn on note book. In View, Diary style, Note Book, first then go to , Insert, New Sticky Page Tab. Pick you font and size and type. Each Tab I use as a chapter. Now I am not saying it will be the be all end all, but I like it and I also use it as a diary, notes, spread sheet, list programs web pages. Give the free be a go, the name of the program is iDaily Diary by Splinterware.
