Take Two

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.