Last week I wrote a scene for one of my stories. I was pleased with it, planned to go through to the next step in the manuscript.
I went to my other computer (the one in my office) and shifted files, saved the files from my flash drive to my hard drive. I thought I’d got all of them. As is my habit, I deleted the files on my flash drive and copied over my big main file. I use the flash drive as a portable back up of most files.
I opened my story expecting to move forward and realized I had copied over the file with the scene I’d written. I was annoyed with myself. I’ve been saying I need a better way to keep track of the files I change but hadn’t done anything about it. I have now.
In wandering around looking at other files, I discovered a copy of the story with the scene I thought I’d lost. This left me with a dilemma – which of the two scenes I’d written did I like better. I read them both and liked parts of both.
I read both version several times and couldn’t decide. Instead I combined the two versions. Going through the scene I cut a little from each and found a nice combined version of the scene. It is probably a little heavy in parts but when I edit the whole story I’ll catch it and cut the fat from the scene. Hopefully I can now move on to the next scene.
As for my issue of saving files, I’ve opted to put files I’ve worked on in a different folder. It is a little cumbersome but for now it works.