Question on organization

[tsaiko]

Okay, this is directed at the all the writers on my friend's list. How do you organize your files on your computer? Specifically, your stories. How do you break it up into manageable bits? Do you seperate by genre? Then how do you seperate it further? What do you do with stories that could fall into more than one genre? How do you prevent yourself from having so many folders and subfolders that you forget what you've started?

The reason I'm asking is I've got between 250-350 stories on my computer. Some of the folders are getting ridiculously full even after I put all the series into their own subfolders. I'm beginning to lose things. That drives me insane.

Any suggestions?

Comments

[shoiryu.livejournal.com]

Stories get sorted depending on fandom/topic. Text files, filenames usually vaguely describe what's in it, otherwise I forget.

[eternalism.livejournal.com]

All of my stories go into a folder titled "Writing". If I write a lot of stories in one particular world or one particular fandom, I stick them in another appropriately titled folder in my writing folder. Writing challenges go into their own folder regardless of genre, fandom, or world. Other than that, everything just gets auto-sorted by title, and I leave it at that.

Of course, I don't have over 200 stories on my computer. If I did, I'd probably have to redo my entire filing system!

[ravensghost.livejournal.com]

I've got folders for specific series or novel length works when I know I'll be doing short things as development (all NaNoWriMo projects get a folder regardless so that I can immediately archive everything in it and delete it from my hard drive without picking through stuff). I also have an "other" folder which contains everything that doesn't have a series or novel. Which reminds me, I should clean that up because some of it needs to get its own folder. Which also reminds me, I need to archive and delete some things. Some of it just makes me shudder.

[silverthunder]

I have a folder called 'Stories'. It has a sub-folder called 'Original' where all the original stuff is. Fandoms I've done a lot of work in, like Digimon, have subfolders as well. Then inside the folders, piece of work that is longer than a one-shot has a sub-folder.

[mechante-fille.livejournal.com]

For my beta stuff I am supremely organized. Each author has a folder(you have one!), and inside, if there are many stories or chaptered stories, there are separate folders for that. Also, in the case of my most prolific betaee, he has subfolders by fandom and original. If I need to quickly find any story I have beta'd, I can get to in in seconds.^_^

My own writing? All in a jumble together. :/

Oh, hey... speaking of your folder, is there any chance that a 'finished' version might join the beta'd version in your folder? And, if other stories want to come play sometime, feel free to send them over.^^

[tsaiko.livejournal.com]

I never sent you the completed version? o_O Why didn't you poke me with a pointy stick! I'll send it to you right now.

Still wound up not being happy with it. If it doesn't make it into the book (and I have a feeling it didn't make the cut) I'm going to keep adding to it. I have an idea of how to fix it.

[magnet-dragon.livejournal.com]

I have a writing folder smack on my desktop. Inside, you'll see a 'shorts' folder, and in that one, there'll be one for 'drabbles' and 'fan shorts.' All the other shorts are just floating around.

Back to the writing folder. I have folders for each series, and chock them full with anything related to that series. Character profiles, drabbles, series.

And the stray files floating around in the root folder tend to be things I'm currently working on. ^_^

[velithya]

Jumping in late on my friends.list catchup: I have a folder called "Stories". Inside that I have a folder for each story, and one called "shorts" that has all the really short stuff that I wrote back in school and such. Anything that's like a paragraph or something just has its own .txt file in the main folder.

[velithya]

I imagine it helps that I don't fanfic, though. :)