Post by Siana Blackwood on Mar 2, 2014 1:01:07 GMT -5
Since it's come up in a few PPTs, I thought a general discussion on tracking editing progress might be interesting 
.
I guess I'll start by trying to explain my own system.
A while back I came up with a diabolically complicated spreadsheet that was supposed to track planning, writing and editing for a single project. It works like this:
Page 1: Log
Columns: Date, start/end times, total time, task (planning, writing, editing), words written, task description.
Basically, every time I sit down to work on the project I enter a start time, then when I finish the session I fill out the rest. If I switch from one task to another, I end the session and start a new one.
Page 2: Planning
Columns: Date, words written (copied from log), hours (copied from log), total words, total hours.
As I'm writing this description, I suddenly think maybe this entire page is redundant. The point of it is to only log 'planning' hours, but it means if I'm editing and have an idea, I either make my spreadsheet inaccurate or have to stop what I'm doing and stuff around with the Log page for a while. Anyway, this page is supposed to be a summary of all tasks labelled 'planning'.
Page 3: Manuscript
Columns: Date, words written today (copied from log), hours spent today (copied from log), total manuscript wordcount (manually entered from the wordcount of the manuscript document), total hours (sum of 'hours spent today' up to the current date), total words written (sum of 'words written today' up to the current day), words added today (today's manuscript wordcount minus yesterday's).
This is the really complicated sheet. Every word and hour I log are added to the first two columns, so at the end of the project I know exactly how many words I wrote and how long it took. Editing hours are included as well. Because I enter the manuscript wordcount every day, I can also see the difference between 'words written' and 'words added'. If I was doing a massive slash and burn, this comparison would probably look really weird.
---
So, I track three things - words per day, hours per day and manuscript length. Depending on the exact type of edit, the wordcounts might not change much at all. Hours aren't necessarily a good thing to track, though, because if you have a goal of 'spend x hours editing', you make progress on the goal just by sitting in front of the computer.
Okay, that's how I track editing at the moment. I kind of hate it, to the point where for my last edit I didn't even use it and went with a scene-based goal instead.
Guess I'll add some more to my wall of text, then
.
For my recent short(ish) story, my editing process went like this:
1. Split the draft into individual scenes in a convenient piece of software that lets me easily add line-by-line comments.
2. Go through and add comments to scenes. These were anywhere from 'dump this bit' to 'isn't there an ENTIRE SCENE missing here?'
3. In a word processor with 'record changes' tools, go through the draft and fix all the stuff I identified in step 2... and the other stuff I didn't see earlier.
I had 44 scenes to edit, so I tracked my progress through steps 2 and 3 by saying I needed to do x scenes per day. This worked really well for the kind of editing where I was prepared to live with the overall structure and wanted to concentrate on very low-level edits. My 'words/hours/manuscript' approach didn't work for this, but 'scenes' isn't the ideal way to track something where large-scale restructuring might be required.
---
So anyway, this can be a thread for collecting as many tracking methods as we can find or think up. Also discussing methods other people post. I'm sure you guys are all nice, friendly folks who can be relied on to provide constructive criticism .
If you have spreadsheets, tables, templates, clever ways of using software or whatever, you're encouraged to share screenshots and/or links to files. I'll possibly add my diabolical spreadsheet in a bit.
Oh, and if you like someone's idea and create a spreadsheet/table/whatever for it as a result of discussion in this thread, please share.
.I guess I'll start by trying to explain my own system.
A while back I came up with a diabolically complicated spreadsheet that was supposed to track planning, writing and editing for a single project. It works like this:
Page 1: Log
Columns: Date, start/end times, total time, task (planning, writing, editing), words written, task description.
Basically, every time I sit down to work on the project I enter a start time, then when I finish the session I fill out the rest. If I switch from one task to another, I end the session and start a new one.
Page 2: Planning
Columns: Date, words written (copied from log), hours (copied from log), total words, total hours.
As I'm writing this description, I suddenly think maybe this entire page is redundant. The point of it is to only log 'planning' hours, but it means if I'm editing and have an idea, I either make my spreadsheet inaccurate or have to stop what I'm doing and stuff around with the Log page for a while. Anyway, this page is supposed to be a summary of all tasks labelled 'planning'.
Page 3: Manuscript
Columns: Date, words written today (copied from log), hours spent today (copied from log), total manuscript wordcount (manually entered from the wordcount of the manuscript document), total hours (sum of 'hours spent today' up to the current date), total words written (sum of 'words written today' up to the current day), words added today (today's manuscript wordcount minus yesterday's).
This is the really complicated sheet. Every word and hour I log are added to the first two columns, so at the end of the project I know exactly how many words I wrote and how long it took. Editing hours are included as well. Because I enter the manuscript wordcount every day, I can also see the difference between 'words written' and 'words added'. If I was doing a massive slash and burn, this comparison would probably look really weird.
---
So, I track three things - words per day, hours per day and manuscript length. Depending on the exact type of edit, the wordcounts might not change much at all. Hours aren't necessarily a good thing to track, though, because if you have a goal of 'spend x hours editing', you make progress on the goal just by sitting in front of the computer.
Okay, that's how I track editing at the moment. I kind of hate it, to the point where for my last edit I didn't even use it and went with a scene-based goal instead.
Guess I'll add some more to my wall of text, then
.For my recent short(ish) story, my editing process went like this:
1. Split the draft into individual scenes in a convenient piece of software that lets me easily add line-by-line comments.
2. Go through and add comments to scenes. These were anywhere from 'dump this bit' to 'isn't there an ENTIRE SCENE missing here?'
3. In a word processor with 'record changes' tools, go through the draft and fix all the stuff I identified in step 2... and the other stuff I didn't see earlier.
I had 44 scenes to edit, so I tracked my progress through steps 2 and 3 by saying I needed to do x scenes per day. This worked really well for the kind of editing where I was prepared to live with the overall structure and wanted to concentrate on very low-level edits. My 'words/hours/manuscript' approach didn't work for this, but 'scenes' isn't the ideal way to track something where large-scale restructuring might be required.
---
So anyway, this can be a thread for collecting as many tracking methods as we can find or think up
. Also discussing methods other people post. I'm sure you guys are all nice, friendly folks who can be relied on to provide constructive criticism .If you have spreadsheets, tables, templates, clever ways of using software or whatever, you're encouraged to share screenshots and/or links to files. I'll possibly add my diabolical spreadsheet in a bit.
Oh, and if you like someone's idea and create a spreadsheet/table/whatever for it as a result of discussion in this thread, please share
.
