What's your in-process document called?

[shadesofmauve]

I write in a fairly haphazard fashion*, and I use a great big unorganized document to store all the pieces that don't have a place to fit yet, or that were removed because they didn't quite fit but still have something decent in them. A lot of writers have something similar, if not the same, and I've gotten kind of intrigued with what they call them.

Mine is the hangar queen ("projectXX-hangar-queen", usually). I've heard 'cutting room floor' and 'boneyard'. Dad just told me Arthur Conan Doyle called it the 'Lumber room.'

Anyone have any good ones?


*Have you ever watched a hard-drive defrag? Pretty much like that.

Comments

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

I call mine "My LiveJournal" ;)

[shadesofmauve]

lol.

That would be such a disaster for me. I'd hop on to look for something I'd written and end up neck deep in comments at ontd_political.

Oh, wait, I already do that anyway...

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

Yeah...

See, Facebook grabs me by the throat while I'm on my way to Livejournal, so I don't even get to the communities. I try typing "fenmere.livejounal.com" and fucking Facebook comes up!

But, private posts with tags make for a good way to search and go directly to an uncommented post.

[evilsherbear.livejournal.com]

"The Wall"
I've got one wall with nothing on it but post it notes of ideas (seriously, I just jot it down and slap it on the wall), but I'm actually going to buy a cork board so I'm not just taping stuff to the wall any more :D

[shadesofmauve]

That's awesome! I want a similar wall when I have my studio (corkboard, for preference). I can't really put stickies on the wall, because when it gets chilly at night they all fall off. I have enough stuff I can't reach lost behind the desk... :P

[baxaronn.livejournal.com]

I have "writing" and "notes" folders and usually end up with two identically-named files, one in each folder. No interesting names, but lots of confusion!

[shadesofmauve]

I'm get scarily organized with file names, honestly -- it's one part the left brained part of my nature, and one part experience from my job. I do NOT want to be working on the wrong file!

[virusq.livejournal.com]

I just ... leave them with vague names on my google docs account.

:\

[shadesofmauve]

...mine got big enough that it broke google docs. *sheepish* At least from some machines. The hangar queen for A Star to Steer Her By is currently about 6,000 words long, and there's a bunch more saved as drafts in gmail (because when work choked on the big google doc, it could still handle email).

[opalgirl28.livejournal.com]

I tend to write in a more orderly fashion--it's the only way I can make sure I don't make a mess out of longer things, never mind that most of my writing these days tends to be no more than ~2500 words or so--but man, you should see my WIP folder*.

*Every new idea/possible story gets it's own document. And they're organized into subfolders by fandom or otherwise, usually with complete nonsense for filenames. Oh, did I mention that said WIP folder is 3+mb big?

[shadesofmauve]

...wow. That's a BIG WIP folder! The entirety of Star isn't that big.

[opalgirl28.livejournal.com]

<-- I blame this guy. (He talks entirely too damn much, and then will hop off and abandon the story mid-thread).

[stasia]

Hmmmph. I don't have one file for all of them together - I keep them by story in the main story folder. I think I call them 'story name snippets'.

Huh.

I should go look.

Stasia

[shadesofmauve]

Yeah, I keep all the bits in one document (I didn't used to, but it works far better for me) in *roughly* chronological order, and the doc's in the story's main folder (if there's a lot of story stuff, like ASTSHB) or just in general writing with a nice clear name (if there's really not a lot to store).

I'm pretty persnickety about file-naming conventions, too, which makes it easy to find things.