methods

I used to have two notebooks to make revisions easier. It's a pain because you have to carry 2 notebooks or else risk being somewhere and wanting to work on something that turns out to be in the other notebook.

Now I have a laptop and a notebook (and a tiny notebook just in case it needs to go into a pocket). I write raw on the laptop some of the time but for poetry it often goes into the notebook first where I can confuse myself with my own bad handwriting and I don't get so attached to the poem as it looks when typed and it seems somehow more "raw material". I'm getting used to typed stuff also being "raw material" and mineable for making a "real thing". But the notebook is comfortingly nonchalant about everything.

Beyond that on the laptop I have one big flat text file of all the "done" poems. I have another for all the Ibarb. translations. Another is a private journal and place for the drafts of essays or maybe offfline blog entries - but mostly private journal. Another is the working drafts of poems - another big flat text file where I type up new things. It is working pretty well as a system but version control is still a huge problem. I copy and paste a few poems into a new document to print them out and submit them somewhere or give them to a friend, or I start to copy and paste into a new thing that might be the new organization of a book manuscript, and (stupidly) I start making changes in that new document.

There used to be a binder where canonical versions of everything were put in alphabetical order and I lost that binder (so horrible!) and need to do that again.

Comments

[Jo]

That's why I want one of those docking computers that are both laptop and desktop. Oh what luxury!

[Prentiss Riddle]

Ed Vielmetti over at Vacuum and Vacuum wiki loves to pick people's brains about how they organize their workspaces, whether physical, mental, digital or paper. He'd probably enjoy having a poet as a guinea pig. He could even have some suggestions, although like the Un!tarian bridegroom, he might rather seek than find.

[badgerbag]

I'm enjoying his blog and wiki. Am very tempted to add myself to the reciprocity ring and offer to give flirting lessons.