It essentially all sums up to: Show your process.
Here are some of the things that I do to show my process.
I’ve been slowly moving all my existing projects to, and especially starting all of my new projects on, online platforms that automatically and actively keep version history
The most accessible software for this is probably Google Docs
Docs doesn’t seem to have a set regularity for recording versions, which is disappointing. But looking through my personal docs, Google does seem to save a version every few minutes, even when you’re actively writing. I think this well meets most reasonable thresholds.
For the works of mine that I prefer to keep on my machine, I make sure to upload the project to Drive, as a new revision, after every substantial working session.
This is mostly the case for me right now with my larger project, because I’ve moved to using the software Scrivener, which I’ve found very useful for drafting large manuscripts.
I save a version of it every night after I’m done writing to my Google Drive folder.
When you’re uploading to Drive, make it sure to save it as a new version. Make sure all your previous versions that are still safe and ready to be reviewed if needed.
I think having different versions and different drafts on your personal computer is still better than having nothing but a magical final draft that is here with you inexplicably. But it’s important that your versions are always being saved and recorded by a third party.
I save every single one of my notes, physical as well as digital
Signing and dating all your physical notes is always a good practice.
I would also consider archiving notes the same way I suggested above for draft revisions.
For clarity, I currently don’t do that, since it might be a lot of work for random Notes App scribbles.
I think a good system would possible be iCloud backups that get taken for Notes in particular at a more regular frequency than for other apps. I’m not sure how feasible this is natively with Apple.
I save all of my correspondences about my projects
This includes emails where I sent earlier versions of the draft to others.
This includes text messages where I’m telling a friend about an idea for a project I have.
Make your A.I policy clear on a public-facing profile if you have one so that there’s never any ambiguity.
I publish mine below.
If you do use A.I as a research tool, you need to be open to publishing all your chats
Tech People, Please Give Us Your Suggestions
Whenever a tech person hears “Version History,” they probably don’t think about Google Docs. They probably think about a software named Git.
Git is the main tool that coders use to keep track of their version history, especially when collaborating in large teams.
I’ve tried to make my process work with Git before, but it’s difficult because many of these files (like .docx) are saved in binary and/or contain a lot of meta data.
Below is my suggestion for software that could help writers through this moment in time. If you know a software that already accomplishes much of what’s outlined below, please tell me.
A Writer’s Versioning Software needs, at minimum, to be able to do the following:
Upon a user’s “commit,” which we tech people should think of as a “commit-and-push".
Take the user’s dot docx, dot scriv, or dot whatever file,
Convert it to a text-only form if needed,
Strip it of its meta data,
Commit the changes made to the text,
Include the meta data in a separate versioned file,
Commit the meta-data to a parallel branch for auditing purposes,
Push the branch changes to a remote repository in an audit-level storage solution.
I know that AWS Glacier has a few storage options available that are explicitly greenlit for legal and auditing purposes.
If this has been a useful outline for a product you’d now like to engineer, please run wild with this. Just give me credit for the idea/outline. I care most that it gets built.
I have a technical background as a data engineer and could feasibly work on something like this, but I think it’ll take the time and effort of someone more dedicated to tech projects than me. Especially since this is going to be something with very large security demands, this isn’t something I’d slop-code.
Every possible security vulnerability is going to require a lot of human attention. We cannot have sloppy software that ruins people’s writing versioning history. It could be what gets or doesn’t get them published. It could be what gets them branded as a slop-writer or an artist.
Unless we’re able to provide availability and security guarantees on par with the big tech companies (on whom we might anyway depend on for a lot of the back end anyway), this isn’t worth doing in the slightest.
Where I Think We’re Headed As Writers and Publishers
I think we’re moving to an audit-based system for writers. Or at least, I think, it’s the system that would make the most sense currently.
I think literary agents and publishing houses need to be kind to writers about this, but I do believe they need to slowly start making it an expectation that, when you submit a work to them, you need to agree to potentially being audited if there are valid suspicions.
I think a worse version of this, which would be easier for agents/publishers but crueler to writers, is an expectation that writers need to collate and present substantial proof of work before submitting. Collating that would be its own week of labor, so thanks, A.I.
My A.I Policy
I have never and will never use A.I as anything more than a research tool for all my creative writing projects.
I will never use A.I to make a creative decision for me. In the context of writing, I consider any visible mark on the manuscript (including the words, down to the punctuation marks, and anything in between) to be a creative decision.
I also have never and will never use A.I for any creative process. This includes generating ideas, outlining, or brain-storming.
