Is there a way to automate (!) or organize free writing into
system that allows the writer to focus entirely on writing instead of
organization itself? I'm currently at the Millay Colony Residency, and given
that I spent the last 4 days addressing this problem, I figured I'd share the
system I designed. Two of the programs, PoemTag and ShortcutFixer, I programmed
myself. The last program, Robobasket 3, is available online. If there's any
interest, I'll release my programs, but I feel as though I may be uniquely obsessed
with process in this way.
So on to it: I free write every day. Some of those
"poems" are destined only to be exercises, and some I am taken by and
want to pursue later. So after I free write a poem and save it into my big
"Poem" folder, I click the start menu and run PoemTag, which
automatically detects which file was just saved:
I rate the poem in how confident I am with its worth from 0
(the default) to 20. By clicking okay, PoemTag creates a shortcut to this file
in my edit folder, and appends exclamations to the filename to reflect its
importance. So if I think asterism is a 3, it will save a shortcut called
!!!Asterism - Shortcut.
This way, I have a folder that only has shortcuts to the
poems I think I want to edit later.
Where Robobasket 3 comes in: I have this program set up to
run in the background. When these shortcuts reach a certain ripeness (1 month?
3 months? I can change it at will), they will automatically be moved to
wherever I want. Say, the desktop. Now I can't avoid seeing those files.
This way, I can forget about all the poems I've written
until enough time has passed that I can give them fresh eyes.
This system does not involve any of the actual poetry files.
Those are safely wherever they were saved.
Finally, if I ever decide to move the original files that my
shortcut system links to, I have designed Shortcut Fixer. This program takes
shortcuts that can no longer figure out where a file is located and locates the
file, thus fixing the broken link.
This way, I can move the actual poem files anywhere I
want--for instance, if I want to move all the free writing I've been doing to a
2016 folder.
That all sounds more complicated than it is. Essentially,
after I free write and save, PoemTag pops up, I tell it a number, and everything
is handled automatically.
For those of us who write so wildly that we cannot be
trusted to organize anything on our own...