When you have a couple of computers on the go, keeping track of the latest draft can be tricky. Have you ever had that moment when, an hour into a final read-through, you think, “Hey, I’m sure I changed that last time,” and you realise you’ve been working on the penultimate draft?
I had this yesterday. It lead to a great shared experience with my ten year old son, though.
I’m working on a YA novella, and realised I had two drafts going at the same time. So I asked my son to read through one draft, while I made any changes to the other.
It was enlightening to hear the words read with his voice. There were sentences which didn’t work, others which did. He said at the end of it, “When can I read the rest?” which is what you what to hear from a reader!
It’s definitely a different thing to have a person read your work and see how well the melody of words is strung. When it’s read from the intended audience it’s even a bigger thrill.
I am in the habit of missplacing my draft after I am done and shove them in a folder deep down a random manner, which is a crisis resolved after a 2 hour search.
Hearing him read this was so fantastic! I might ask him to read the whole thing aloud once I’m done. He’s so happy I’m writing something he can read!
I have taken to ensuring the date is part of the draft’s name. That way I can search for the date if nothing else!
The date bit seems to do the thing, but I am not known for being very meticulous either. I need to sort my files once and for all. It will be a bit of a feat, but I like sorting sometimes.
if you are using word, there is a very handy feature to compare two documents (tools > track changes > compare documents is the path in the current mac version – hopefully somewhere similar in other versions). I find this invaluable when it looks like a shared document has been changed and the dates not changed correctly!
Thanks for that! It sounds very useful indeed.