Anthony Lee Collins

I guess I’m old school when it comes to writing and computers. I like to have my files stored locally, not just up in the clouds somewhere. And I never write in Word, since everything I write is destined, at least in theory, for the web.

But every project is different. As the saying goes, you don’t learn how to write a story — you just learn how to write the story you’re writing now.

My project right now is “The Bus Station Mystery.” It’s done, yes, but it’s not done. It needs more work — mostly it needs to be filled out. I listened to it recently, and my main note to myself was: “This story sure whizzes along!”

And not only the pace but the pacing seems off — the big scene where we learn who all the suspects are comes more than three quarters of the way through the story. [And now a pause for me to consider the words “pace” and “pacing”…]

Anyway.

I’ve been figuring out the best way to edit this story. It’s divided up into ten blog posts, so that doesn’t work for making any sort of substantial changes. I can create an HTML file with the whole thing (I wrote a script to pull the parts out of the WordPress database and combine them), but editing a story once all the HTML codes are in place is awkward.

So, I settled on a Google Doc. That seems to be working pretty well so far. I can make notes and edits on my phone during the day and then do more on the computer at night. A whole new way of writing (for me) seems to be working fine.

I’m writing some new scenes (well, one so far) in Google Keep, so I can easily decide later on where they should go in the story, if anywhere.

But I do export the current Google Doc draft to a Word file on my computer from time to time. Just to be safe.