I’m cutting, expanding, editing and re-working three stories right now.  All are being prepped for specific markets and have already been through a thousand and one edits, or so it feels.

And let me just say, keeping track of the versions can be a royal pain.

It should be simple.  Version 1, 2, 3, etc. ad inifinity.

But it’s not.  First off, when I send a story to a new place, I generally save it with that pubs name in the title, such as:

The Greatest Story.Pro Magazine.rtf

Or some such.  This helps me keep track of what formating I’ve used, since many magazines have different specs, and avoids my accidentally sending the story off with the wrong title or cover letter.  However, when it comes to re-writing, that can make it a pain because I may have cut one version of the story down, not because I thought it was better that way, but just because it needed to hit a lower word count.  Incidentally, I probably tweaked here and there and might have made other improvements to the story while I had it open.

Of course, that means that when it comes time to send it to market C, I have to try and mesh the different versions that were sent to A and B, without losing any of my precious edits.  Add in the critiques of friends, both online and scribbled on hard copy, the use of online submission forms, or, worse, different versions being saved on different computers based on whether that computer has Wordperfect or Microsoft Word, and the whole thing can wind up a real mess.

>Rolls Eyes< And I'm generally a very organized person, and keep careful track of all the specs on my stories.  I pity the poor writer who gets half way through the process before realizing they should have been using an organizational system from the start.