Writing.Com General Discussion

Thanks Emily,

Wow, that's quite a gallery of badges. Who said 'we don't need no badges'? They didn't know writers. Talk about motivation. I do hope it's working for others. We'll see how it works for me.

Speaking of- I've got to get this off my keyboard. I get the messages that I have been to this site or that one. And I do appreciate them. The notes remind me that the sites are there and 'oh yeah, I'm a member'. Here's the thing though, I'm not one of those people who posts things just to post. When I have something to say, I will say it, share it.

I know far too many people who are hooked on social-media. It's not a bad thing, it's a tool, an instrument for our daily lives. And lets face it, for some of us it's the quickest way to get a good laugh or an awe moment. Have you seen the picture of the baboon sticking his tongue out? Or the scores of kitten and puppy images- don't count them just melt in awes. And my recipe collection has grown out of control thanks to all the shares- ::: shrugs ::: Sorry, Tastes of Home.

Anyway, I digress. I understand the importance of social media. In today's world it's a much needed tool but that's all that it is. It's a tool- it's not meant to be a leash or a lifestyle. I know a few folks who can't live without their SM connections. To me, this is a problem. You see, I'm not good at multi-tasking. I prefer to focus on one project at a time. It's how I'm wired, it's in my DNA.

In 2018, my school Long Ridge Writers Group- now Institute for Writers send out a writing journal to all past and present students. This has been a God-send for me. Using this journal, I was able to take on a task that at first seemed insurmountable. I had people, on social media, tell me things like "don't do it.", 'just start over, fresh, new." And my personal favorite "you need to be focused on 'forward writing." I get the meaning of 'forward writing' still, this was a new term for me.

Like I said on another site, "First, I've come to learn something about myself. As I age, if I get the notion, an idea to do something- and someone tells me not to do it- I’m still doing it. Of course, we're talking about things that don't cause harm and aren't illegal."

Cutting to the chase here- I had decided it was time to reorganize me writing files. I started with copying all of the files from all of the CDs I had. Then I moves all of the files from the flash drives and bulked the two collections into one folder on one large flash drive. 8 gigs worth of a drive. I found myself looked at roughly 2 point 25 gigs worth of files. It took the bulk of the year to get through them.

The majority of this happened in the fall after a friend on Second Life told me about Auslogics duplicate file finder program. GOLD! If you have problems with clone files, like I do, you want a program like this. This saved me years worth of time on this part of my writing projects. I was able to sort, somewhat organize, and purge files. No, I did not delete anything that would have been a loss. What I did do is purge all of the clone files- which is what was the starting problem in all of this. I mentioned that I had started with 2 point 25 gigs. By the end of the purge, I had less than 800 megs. All of my writings- academics, for publication, RPG, and for fun writings are now all burned to ONE CD. Yay! I made a copy of these files to work with for editing and revising. I keep these on a 2 gig flash drive. I feels good to know that if something happens to these copies, I can grab the back-up CD and retrieve another copy.

Now, in 2019, I believe that I can get to that 'forward writing'. And I've started the year off right. There were 2 major tasks and a handful of others that can be done with spare time.

I started when I got the e-mail from IFW. They had sent out another writer's journal. Since this one was shorter and a number of the pages are identical to one from 2018, I thought "why not merge the two?" So I did. Organizing this was more time consuming than I had originally thought it would be. I set it aside to finish the primary task of the month: finishing the edits on 'CHOICES'.

Okay, yeah, I worked on the edits / polish of a scene for an RPG story that first week. This was before I had decided to merge the journals. It was before I even saw the e-mail from IFW.

Anyway, there's nothing like concurring an insurmountable project ( especially one people told you 'don't do it' ) to restore the confidence. I don't recommend it if you can avoid it- in this case, however, it was unavoidable. I was stumbling over clones and partial clones left and right- and the files were in disarray. I had to get reorganized.

I still need to finish, polish the organizing, however, the bulk was done last year. All of the files are now separated by their primary subjects- Academics, Novels, RPG, etc. The clones have been purged, and now, I can think straight. Well, hopefully, think straight- that's a constant work in progress.

In the end, I took a break after the clone purging- enjoyed the Holidays- and got back to work after the new year. I told myself that 2019 was going to be my year of writing. And I'm off to a great start. CHOICES is ready to be submitted for publication. I have updated the file on my portfolio here.

https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2008634-Choices

Best of luck to everyone in your writing.
May you never have to deal with clone files the likes that I had.

Mindy