flemmings | This is the fic that never ever ends

Long fic is long and I am at my witzend.

Given that I wrote the prequel to it five years ago, it's not suprising that Kaiei at the Southern Ocean should have become an unwieldy mass by now. Given that it's an unwieldy mass, it's not surprising that it should take so long, especially as I'd rather be working on wieldy masses, like its various sequels. I'd thought of just chopping off the first part and treating the end as a separate story, but Kaiei becoming enamoured of Pipang really grows out of all he was doing in his uncle's palace.

My problem is that the word document is now too damned big to get around in, especially if I want to edit bumpfy passages out but save them for later inclusion should I need them. Should I chop everything up into de facto chapters, make them all separate docs, and keep track that way? Yes, I know novel writers use excel spread sheets, but I never mastered excel. Bear in mind too my high resolution: I can't have several windows open simultaneously on the same screen and switch back and forth, not without going to 800x600 and straining my eyes.

So what do you guys do?

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There's an open-source something called YWrite which apparently lets you do Lots of Organising, though as I don't write long pieces I've never really worked out how to use it. *shrug* Might be worth a try, might be too unwieldy. Editing out but saving for later, I usually do by having two documents on the go, one for the main story and one for the offcuts.

(cheerful) Not a clue how it works. Possibly I'm thinking of some spreadsheet-type software where you plug in characters' names and bio details and what must happen to whom when and who knows what at which time.

You leave the *whole manuscript* in one doc? 250,000 word novel in one doc? OK, maybe Mac's wapuro isn't as clunky that way as Word but still...

But still, novels have chapters. I suppose my novella must too.

Mh, thanks. Maybe I'll go looking for YWrite. Organization is probably what I need, and I do recall people rolling their eyes over pro writers who use post-it notes to keep track of which way the story's going.

What I really want is the sort of thing I'd do with a paper ms: notes in the margin, red lines around a paragraph to say Maybe this bit will come out, etc. The trouble with wapuro is that I never see the entire doc as a whole, it's always 'this bit on the screen now.'

This is the fic that never ever ends

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