Ancillary Material

[skip.knox]

Hey folks--particularly Scrivener folks but all comments welcome--I have a question about organizing files.

There's the book, which may consist of one or more files.
There's the supporting material--all the world building stuff.
Then there's the editing process. Not just the emails between you and the editor, but any associated documents.
Then there's the publication process. Now we're talking cover artist and all those files, an illustrator (e.g., cartographer). Perhaps an agent and publisher.
Then there's marketing--the blurb, the summary, announcements, swag.

Where do you keep all this?

I'm thinking of putting *everything* inside the Scrivener project. Not merely making a folder and stuffing things in there, but actually including them in the project, so it appears somewhere in the Binder. That way, all of it gets backed up as a normal part of the Scrivening. Does anyone do this? Does it have drawbacks?

Right now I have an entirely separate folder structure called "Business". Under that I have a folder for each work, whether published or in progress, with subfolders for the areas mentioned above. This feels cleaner to me, but it does mean I have to make backups on my own. Which is sort of okay by me. The book itself needs backups more often than do, say, contracts or design specs.

Anyway, I'm curious to hear from you. It's surprising how much material is associated with the business of writing.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I keep all relevant info for a story in a single Scrivener file, but I haven't gone the self-pub route yet. Maps and whatever, commissioned art. Sadly, my editor works in Word, which drives me crazy. Complicates matters, but she's good. I also have a base level Scrivener file that I have political and religious info and maps in, copy that, for starting a new story with the same necessary bits. I haven't seen a drawback to Scrivener yet, except that my editor doesn't use it! Yes, I must harp on that. I loathe working in Word, it gives me the heebie jeebies.



Oh! I also keep digital receipts for any associated expenses, such as the editor.

Hey folks--particularly Scrivener folks but all comments welcome--I have a question about organizing files.

There's the book, which may consist of one or more files.
There's the supporting material--all the world building stuff.
Then there's the editing process. Not just the emails between you and the editor, but any associated documents.
Then there's the publication process. Now we're talking cover artist and all those files, an illustrator (e.g., cartographer). Perhaps an agent and publisher.
Then there's marketing--the blurb, the summary, announcements, swag.

Where do you keep all this?

I'm thinking of putting *everything* inside the Scrivener project. Not merely making a folder and stuffing things in there, but actually including them in the project, so it appears somewhere in the Binder. That way, all of it gets backed up as a normal part of the Scrivening. Does anyone do this? Does it have drawbacks?

Right now I have an entirely separate folder structure called "Business". Under that I have a folder for each work, whether published or in progress, with subfolders for the areas mentioned above. This feels cleaner to me, but it does mean I have to make backups on my own. Which is sort of okay by me. The book itself needs backups more often than do, say, contracts or design specs.

Anyway, I'm curious to hear from you. It's surprising how much material is associated with the business of writing.

 

[Peat]

I stick all of my associated business under Characters because I'm too lazy to make another folder but yes, makes sense to me to have it in there. That said - I have recently taken to having two separate Scrivener files, one for background and one for actual writing, as I find it easier to switch back and forth that way. I'd probably put all ancillary material in background in that case.

 

[skip.knox]

@Peat: I do the same. I have a separate project called World Reference that holds meta info, notes, and a heaping pile of disorganized information. Good ol' Scrivener.

That's two votes for Everything in One Place. Ain't we innovative, though?

Srsly, thanks. I've some major business in hand at the moment, but then I'll start moving files into Scrivener projects. One of these days, I gotta get myself organizized.

 

[Peat]

You'll probably beat me to it

 

[Penpilot]

I keep everything but pictures in the Scrivener file, my cover letters, my synopsis, my world building, etc.

The way I organise myself is I have a folder for each of my stories. That folder holds my Scrivener file. That Scrivener file holds my master text for the story, and all the stuff I mentioned above. In that folder, I may also have other folders for pictures, or for word/rtf/etc. files of that story that are formatted to the specifications of wherever place I've sent it.

I don't put pictures into the Scrivener file because it can balloon up the file size by a very significant amount. For example, one time for fun, my writing group decided we would do a Hollywood casting call for our stories, so I put in a bunch of pictures of actors who I though would be good matches to play my characters. There were like 5-10 smallish pictures, and it turned a 5 meg file into a 20 meg file. Not any way near a disaster by today's standards, but it made backing up the file take way longer. Instead of backups taking a few seconds, it could take minutes. Overall it just made things a bit more clumsy.

 

[skip.knox]

Thanks, Penpilot. That was one of the things I worried about, for I do keep a file of pics. Since Altearth stories all occur in real places, I tend to collect lots of photos. Cover art and interior illustrations add to that.

But not having them imported into Scrivener also means I have to back them up separately. I'm starting to think I should invest in carbonite or similar software, to handle backup chores.

 

[Steerpike]

I don't keep extraneous files, such a photographs and the like, in Scrivener or Ulysses (I've been writing with both lately; the latter just to check it out). I have a Dropbox folder where I keep that stuff, and it gets backed up to the cloud and can be accessed from any of my computers.

 

[Penpilot]

For me, I back up the text regularly just using the scrivener back up function and upload it to google drive. Once every month or so, I simply compress the whole project folder and move it to my physical back up drive. How often I back up with each method depends on how much change there is.

If all I'm changing is text then I just back up the text. But if just grabbed a bunch of photos etc., I'll do a larger backup soon after.