Gus, I feel your pain. I dealt with that crap last year and the guy wrote it all on post-it notes. And 99% of them were layout questions.

I have never written "Not the writer's purview" so many times before, and I'm damned if I ever intend to again.

Write them back, "I'm the content, you're the CSS, bucko."

He called me "funnier than a monkey in a crack house, and twice as twisted."

Now THIS is a t-shirt!

Don't get him started on the T-shirts again.

It's all fun and "why don't we set the whole thing in Lucida Bold!!" until an author gets cranky. Generally speaking, it's safer to ask the author for an opinion, and get none, than not to ask and get lots.

I have a ton of edits to do, and everything is feeling unweildy, I'm getting confused between versions. I think I need to break it up into individual essays again or I'll have a meltdown.

How do you all keep your manuscripts organized?

I do the layout and send the author a galley proof so s/he can see what it looks like. If he complains, I might fix it. Generally, he doesn't.

I have an intricate organization system understandable only to me. It involves color-coded folders.

I do the layout and send the author a galley proof so s/he can see what it looks like. If he complains, I might fix it. Generally, he doesn't.

Yup. Now, granted -- we publish textbooks and pharmacy journals, not fiction or widely read non-fiction. So the authors don't really tend to have an issue with us using Palatino instead of Times, or whatever.

And we do also send galleys to the authors with any corrections/questions/etc. written out in full sentences, because we know that authors are a cranky and curmudgeonly lot who go online and post on message boards about how we send them galleys with scary and arcane markings.

hugs agent

This is the first time I've ever even attempted to write a book, so I'm learning as I go. I do need a system to organize. I'm in this weird funk/despair because it feels like I'm standing in a corner with stacks of newspapers and fast food containers like a packrat, and I have no idea where to start. I'm terrified of tossing anything, and it seems so daunting.

Color coded folders sounds like a plan.

Filenaming conventions are good too. Like, title_part_date (vampslobby_ch01_022606.doc), etc. You can always tell what increment you're working with; and you can always tell what version of that increment you're dealing with. Also, it sits nicely in order in a computer directory, so you can see at a glance what files you have.

I usually also create a generic "old" folder, so that when I'm really sure a version is out of date, I can move it out of the way, but don't have to worry about deleting it.

File organization is all about not seeing what you don't need to see, but knowing that it's there if you really need it.