Coal Rivalry

[coalcube]

All the things Coal said, running through my head.

Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

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Comments

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

400 words of mistakes sounds like "fuck that was the wrong draft" not "I am literally writing these after reveals"

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I don't write like this (like, I have one single file that I edit until it's the finished version which I then copy and upload to AO3), so I honestly can't wrap my head around this. Do you really save your old, discarded drafts (and why?)? And you save them under such a similar name as the finished file that you might confuse them (again, why?!?)? And you don't read the fic again on AO3 once you uploaded it?

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

DC, but I use Ellipsus, which allows you to start a new draft that’s nested within the original document. I occasionally use that feature instead of just editing the original document if I’m not sure I’m going to like the new draft more than the old one. I think it would be fairly easy to not realize you didn’t click over to the right draft and accidentally copy and paste the wrong one to AO3.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

NCYRT

I used to write my drafts in one file, but a couple of years ago I got converted to the wonder that is version control. I will make multiple drafts of the same fic that are distinguished by either the date I started the new draft or version numbers. I have a tendency when editing to delete too much and having old versions of a draft helps me recover the sections I impulsively deleted. I also will often retype sections I'm struggling with when editing into a new document and it absolutely improves the final version for me, in my experience, to do this laborious process. I do check obsessively when uploading that I've got the right draft into AO3, but, for me, having multiple versions of the fic is so helpful for how I edit.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

DC: For an exchange fic I tend to have the version that's uploaded to AO3 (uploaded as soon as I have something passible, as a bus pass/anxiety reducer), the version on Scrivener (theoretically, the definitive copy) and the version on Ellipsus (working copy, for editing at work/on mobile). None of those automatically sync with each other. Am I capable of making sure everything is all up to date with each other? theoretically. But it's very easy to lose track of which version the most recent edits are in and whether they've been uploaded to AO3 yet. (Or whether you did half the edits in one app and half in another and never merged.) And yeah, you should be reading over the fic on AO3, but editing on AO3 can sometimes do really weird stuff to your formatting, so I try to do all the reading over in the other programs. Or you think you're going to do one last round of edits in Scrivener so you wait to do the final readover on AO3 until then, and then don't get time for that, so it never does get the final AO3 readover...

Luckily the only time I forgot I hadn't uploaded the most recent major edits I caught it before just before collection reveals but I could easily see myself realizing Christmas morning that in the chaos of the day before I hadn't uploaded the most recent version.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

After I nearly lost my 5k yuletide story to saving accident, you betcha I have several backup copies in several locations. And on occasion I then add to the wrong one or format the wrong one or spag check the wrong. I just figured that out before posting.