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Chapter by chapter rules!
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Posted by Cassius
May 7, 2012 at 03:28 PM
I believe that the following warnings were given years ago. But for those newer forum members here they are again. I’ve experienced all of these first-hand:
1. In Word 2000 (and possibly later versions), combining separate Word documents may cause corruption of the combined document. I’m not certain, but the cause may be such things as page margins or other global settings that differ among the individual documents.
2. Some email systems (Lotus’ for one) can actually “edit” attached Word and Excel files. I recall emailing an attached Word document to someone for review. She made a few changes and emailed it back. Some “edits” did not make sense, so I called her. She said that she had not made those changes. So we compared, via CDs, a copy my original document, the copy she received, her copy with her changes, and the emailed copy I received from her. It became clear that the email system had made RANDOM changes in the attached Word files—-changes that could only be ascertained by rereading the entire document.
Suggestion: Transmit files by CD or, if by email, zip the files so that changes will more likely look like obvious corruptions.
3. Configuration management, for those not familiar with the term, means MAKE CERTAIN that changes to a document are made to the MOST RECENT revision. I’ve had contributors make changes to documents that were three revisions old. Programmers are very familiar with this problem.
-c
Posted by Hugh
May 7, 2012 at 05:19 PM
I lost work using MS Word. It usually happened when I was re-ordering chunks within files amounting to 20,000-plus words, and when the Document Map was involved.
There used to be a useful website giving instructions about how to avoid instability with Word and strip it down for longer projects: among many pieces of advice to help make the UI less bloated and more reliable it stressed that one absolutely shouldn’t use the Document Map (as I only discovered later). This really wasn’t acceptable to me, as an unreconstructed re-orderer and re-drafter.
That was several years ago and I was using Word 2003 or 2000. Its failings started me on the lengthy search for a satisfactory replacement for long-form writing. Most of the would-be “longer-writing” replacements for Word share the Document Map plus Editing Pane model that Word uses—but try in various ways to avoid the corruption/instability/loss of work risks that Word seemed to run in the past (e.g. Page Four, Liquid Story Binder, Scrivener, Storyist, Chapter by Chapter).
I’m now back using Word, but for revision and editing only. It still seems to me that it’s designed primarily for business correspondence and reports. Most of those new-ish rivals have now added functionality specifically designed for long-form, which Word lacks, although I’ve heard that by stripping it down and using macros you can achieve something that approaches Scrivener/Liquid Story Binder. Sounds too much like hard work to me. So I combine a drafting application in a workflow with a finishing and polishing application - MS Word.
I can’t believe that Microsoft haven’t now remedied the issues that caused the instability previously, and, of course, our hardware is now much more powerful and should be capable of allowing one to dice and slice long documents without turning them into alphabet-sludge. In addition, .doc, and .docx are still the standards for submission to agents and publishers in the UK and the US, and Word’s revision functionality, mainly “Track Changes”, is still the best as far I’m concerned, especially where “round-tripping’ is involved. In this mode, I don’t attempt big re-orderings of sections, and so far I haven’t encountered any problems.
In this sense, Chapter by Chapter may be a solution to a problem that Word once had, but has no longer. But I still would be reluctant to trust it with hatching a book-length project from concept to query-letter.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
May 7, 2012 at 06:12 PM
To clarify, I start from one single document with specific format, break down into chapters, share them with the relevant collaborators in various ways (e.g. via Glasscubes which provides version) and then compile the final files. Up to now I have not had any issues.
Posted by Pavi
May 9, 2012 at 07:15 AM
Well, for me using a writing environment (in my case Word files embedded into Ultra Recall) helps to break down the content into manageable pieces. This is especially useful for “episode style” writing, as I am doing. You additionally can see which chapters, or episodes are at various stages, and link these together with research, notes, tasks, etc. (even e-mail!).
So basically it adds a lot of features and power present in Ultra Recall to the writing process.
Best, /Pavi
Gary Carson wrote:
>I should’ve said that it’s a solution looking for a problem when it comes to writing
>novels. I can see how this would be very useful for other things.