Thursday 5 December 2024: Catching up…

The bright-eyed and bushy-tailed may have noticed that the blog is running a bit behind at the moment, about half a day behind. This is because I’ve been writing it all on the day it posts, rather than writing it as I go along and scheduling it to post the following day. I’m trying to catch up, but it hasn’t worked so far.

Wednesday was a good day in the end because I did finish and submit the 300-word story, Let It Snow. Thursday dawned and the plan was to crack on with The Old Annexe. But when I opened my TickTick, the first job on the list was ‘publish The City of Glasgow’, which is due out on Monday.

So I knuckled down to do that instead. 

It should have been a nice quick job, but since I moved from PC to Mac, I haven’t properly organised my files. I’ve copied them from the portable hard drive when I’ve needed them, but I’d got to the stage where I had about 6 different versions of everything in 3 different places, and it isn’t clear which is the latest version.

Hunting down the Word file for the story was one thing. I also had to hunt down the template for the last one, Harvey’s Festival, so I could nick it and paste in the new story, then REMEMBER to save it as The City of Glasgow. 

It took me ages to find the right files, the latest versions, so I set about finally putting them all into some kind of order. Or the short stories at least. I had all of the below working wonderfully on the PC but it all got muddled up. Now I’m replicating it on the Mac.

I have a Master working folder in which everything goes. Writing is now #1 folder in there. It was #3, as I’d started on Admin and Scrivener first, but now I’m using the writing folder more, I moved it to pole position and changed the numbering on the others.

Inside the Writing folder, Fiction is Folder #1 and Short Stories are Folder #3 in Fiction. Then I have a Short Story Master folder. The first file is my Short Story Master Scrivener file, where all my short stories live in one place in their own directories while I work on them: 

Master → Writing → Fiction → Short Stories → Short Story Master → Short Story Master Scrivener File

The first folder below the Scrivener file is 12 Stories in 12 Months, because everything usually starts there. I have 2 folders inside the 12 Stories folder, 2023 and 2024. And then each prompt for each month has its own folder. 

When I started 12 Stories, we could upload an image to the website to illustrate our story, and I’d upload the artwork I used on the cover. I like to have at least a working cover in place anyway, because we can upload it to Scrivener and so I can use anything on the cover in my descriptions. Both the artwork, correctly captioned, and the cover image go in this folder.

If I use Plottr to plot a short story, then that outline will also go into the same folder. So the file path so far looks like this:

Master → Writing → Fiction → Short Stories → Short Story Master → 12 Stories in 12 Months → 2023/2024 → Title/Prompt → (Outline + ) 1^st Draft + Cover + Artwork

I could do with moving everything up one and replacing Short Stories with Short Story Master, but I haven’t got around to that yet. 

I write the story in Scrivener then export it to RTF or DOCx. Once I have my first draft and I’ve submitted it to the website, I MOVE the entire story folder into another folder, In Progress, higher up the tree and add any subsequent drafts into this folder:

Master → Writing → Fiction → Short Stories → Short Story Master → In Progress → Title/Prompt → (Outline + ) 1^st Draft + Cover + Artwork + 2^nd Draft(s)

I MOVE it rather than COPY it so I don’t have a gazillion versions all over the place. I usually keep a backup and a straight copy of everything anyway in case anything gets lost. I mean, we all know how reliable technology can be.

Usually by now I know if it’s going to be a Wordsworth Short, a Wordsworth Flash Fiction, or something else, but for now it stays in In Progress. Remember, this is short stories I’m talking about. 

My stories usually go on 12 Stories in 12 Months first, if applicable. If it’s for something else, it still starts in the Scrivener file, but the RTF and DOCx files are exported straight into the In Progress folder. But when I’m happy with them, they get moved into Waiting To Be Published:

Master → Writing → Fiction → Short Stories → Short Story Master → Waiting To Be Published → Title/Prompt → (Outline + ) 1^st Draft + Cover + Artwork + 2^nd Draft(s)

And then, as I continue to work on them, they get moved again into the relevant folders:

• Calls For Submissions
• Competitions
• Words Worth Reading
• Wordsworth Shorts
• Wordsworth Flash Fiction
• Short Tarot Tales
• Wordsworth Collections
• Newsletter
• Medium

e.g. Master → Writing → Fiction → Short Stories → Short Story Master → Calls for Submissions → Dragonsoul Press → Title/Prompt → (Outline + ) 1^st Draft + Cover + Artwork + 2^nd Draft(s)

And this is the order they’re submitted and/or published in too. But if it’s already appeared on 12 Stories, I take it down from there before sending it on its merry way.

As I publish the books on Draft2Digital, I download the final Word document they give me plus the EPUB file and the MOBI file they give me, and I tuck those away into their respective folders too. I use the EPUB file D2D makes to upload to Google Play or Kindle Direct Publishing, if KDP won’t accept it for whatever reason from D2D. 

This means the file path now looks something like this:

Master → Writing → Fiction → Short Stories → Short Story Master → Wordsworth Shorts → Title/Prompt → (Outline + ) 1^st Draft + Cover + Artwork + 2^nd Draft(s) + Word doc + EPUB file + MOBI file

Every single one of the specific folders in the bullets above has a Done folder, where the stories are COPIED to for ever. This is just so I have a firm record of what’s been where.

Yes, it’s repeating it in some places. But at least I know where to find the latest version of something if I need it. For longer books, I also have the PDF file D2D makes for me or, for the bookazine, the one I make in Affinity. 

So that’s what I was doing today.

Oh yes, and I did publish The City of Glasgow in the end, both on Draft2Digital and on Google Play Books. Google Play was the first to list it, despite the actual publication date being Monday. Google said I hadn’t included the pricing info at first, but when I checked, I had. I saved it again, though, and Google listed is as available for preorder straight away.

Maybe on Friday I’ll get back on the wagon.