New User with a focus on poetry

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

Hello,
I have just acquired Scrivener (Windows Version 1.9.7.0) and am developing my competence with the current software prior to the arrival of Scrivener 3 for Windows.
I will be using the software solely to help write single poems, organise and produce poetry books, small poetry sets, enter competitions and operate within poetry groups/clubs.
Currently, I am grappling with the hierarchical structure of the Binder. I have been working on the principle of, first creating a list of all my individual poems ( each contained in its own text file). I then created a series of folders labelled, for example:

 Poetry Books
 Competitions
 Cross-Border Poetry Club
 Monthly Morning Poetry Group
 Etc.

To populate the above series of folders with relevant poems I have assumed that I could use the ‘Duplicate’ function in Documents to create additional copies of the individual poem text files and then place these in the relevant folder. Using this approach I would maintain a master list of my individual poems. However, I have now found that when editing a poem in one folder, the changes are not automatically applied to any previously made ‘duplicates’.
This is a significant limitation to how I originally planned to organise and use the Binder!
A possible solution is:

Step 1 ONLY review, revise or change a poem that is contained in the Master Folder List of text files

Step 2 MANUALLY replace all duplicates of the poem that occur in other folders

Step 3 MINIMISE confusion by keeping the changed name of any duplicated file,

Step 4 INTRODUCE an additional a Status setting to be called ‘Duplicate’ which is applied to every poem file that is duplicated

This approach could be very cumbersome and is vulnerable to making errors and introducing confusion between different versions of the same poem!

An alternative could be to maintain a Master List of all my poems but instead of having a single folder list, have all the poems spread across the different folder categories. Then, if I must create a duplicate of a particular poem for a different Folder (an example could be poem contained in a published poetry book also being used in one or several competitions) then I treat them as rare exceptions to the general rule. I could colour code, use a ‘Duplicate’ status marker, document notes or something similar to highlight the occurrence.

From your experience, am I missing a trick? Is there anybody who has found a way of overcoming my perceived limitation? Clearly, in an ideal world, I would like the option of creating duplicates that did allow changes from the original to be automatically applied to all duplicates. I make extensive use of Adobe Lightroom which has the equivalent operational arrangement for images and does just that, it is called a virtual copy.

However, I don’t live in an ideal world but I know from previous experience of using software packages that it is vitally important at the beginning to get my approach as appropriate as possible to my needs. Otherwise, I could get very frustrated after establishing a system and then later discovering some critical and avoidable flaws. In particular, I am very conscious that it is important to get the hierarchical structure of the binder correct otherwise I will inherit many future problems!!!

Any help and guidance would be most welcome.

Thank you,

Waldok

2

I use Scrivener as part of my workflow for poetry submissions.

There is no need to duplicate documents. I wrote a separate program that manages my submissions, but I keep the poems themselves in Scrivener.

Here’s the approach I’d recommend for you.

Create a Master Poems folder for your poems. Import your poem files (text, RTF, docx, whatever). This folder will hold the most recent revision of each poem.
Before revising a poem, take a snapshot of that poem. This will give you a history of revised poems, with date.

Create a Submissions folder. Under that, a folder (or document list) for each submission. This will give you a history of poems submitted, by venue.

In the submission folders, put only Scrivener links to poems (in the Master Poems folder) that are part of this submission.
You can instead create a separate document for each poem in the submission (Scrivener link). This allows you to assign label and status per poem.
For date submitted, create a meta-data field and set the value in the submission folder. You can also create a custom meta-data status field: pending, accepted, rejected, or use the Scrivener status, modified to your needs.

When ready to submit, create a new collection and give it a name including venue (magazine, contest, whatever) and date. Your Scrivener links under the submission show you what poems you want for that submission. Go to the Master Poems folder, select each poem, and add it to the new collection. This way you can compile selected poems for a submission, and control the order they are compiled in, if you need to put them in a single document (as some magazines require). Then compile that collection. Or, if the magazine requires each poem in a separate document, compile each document from the collection separately.

Hope this helps. Let me know if I can clarify anything.

Steve

3

Thank you, both Waldok and Steve, for all this. I also write and submit poetry, but (strangely) I had never thought of using Scrivener for this. I use my word processor, and a careful filing-folder system in Windows. But I run into the same kinds of issues that Waldok describes. It requires careful attention to keep the most recent version of a poem in front of me, and in my submissions, and also in its filed location.

I think Steve is pointing in the right direction with the suggestion of Scrivener links. One might also take advantage of the fact that in Scrivener, a document can also be a “folder,” with documents underneath/ inside it. I believe that what I would do if (or maybe when!) I shift my poetry activity into Scrivener would be to have a Master folder with the reference copy of each poem. I might subdivide this folder by year of original creation. Underneath the master copy of each poem, I would have its previous versions as separate documents, so I could fairly easily go through its complete version history. Each time I need to revise a poem, I’d copy the current master version to a new document underneath it, as the most recent prior version, and then edit away, secure in the knowledge that prior versions were available to check as needed. (How many times have I revised a poem almost to death, only to figure out that I was right 5 versions previous?)

I’d have a separate top-level Submissions folder in the binder, with each periodical, contest, etc., in its own folder underneath. Each submission would then be a subfolder of one of those folders. To create a submission, I’d use Scrivener links to the master copies of poems (easily created by holding down Alt while dragging the master document into the submission document). Once I had decided which poems I wanted to include in a submission, I’d then go through and click the Scrivener link of each one. This would open it in the other editor window, where I could make any needed revisions (using the process described above), then select the finalized text and drag it into the submission document (this copies rather than cuts, so the text would remain unaltered in the master document).

I hope that makes some sense (whether it’s the best system for anyone else or not). Thanks again for stimulating my thinking. And in another thread recently, someone posted that the ability to have a linked master copy that updates when you update the document elsewhere in the project is coming in version 3 of the Windows program, when it emerges (hopefully) sometime later this year.

4

I don’t have v3, so I may be wrong about this, but have a look at the Mac v3 manual section 10.1.5 Including Text from Other Documents. That should give you the details for how the feature will likely work in Win v3. :smiley:

5

The thing that makes me wonder is why you don’t consider Snapshots for this? Snapshots do exactly that, save a copy of the file with a date, in date order … you could also use Named Snapshots to give then a submission name if that was useful. But the great thing about Snapshots is they’re there when you need them but don’t clutter up your binder.

Just my two ha’p’orth.

:slight_smile:

Mark

6

Dear Steve, Thanks David and others,
Thank you very much for your support. I believe I am now at the stage where I can now learn by using! !!
I now have a master file of all my poetry and have established two modes of sorting (by status and style/form). I am grouping my poetry using two methods (Scrivener links and Collections) and will develop a final approach through further testing. So far, I have not explored the ‘output’ side of the software, that will come later.
Some of the comments indicated that Scrivener 3 for Windows may have the ability the ability to automatically carry over changes made to one document over to a previously duplicated version. If this becomes the case then that will provide users with a major benefit.
Cheers, Waldok

7

I blush to admit that I haven’t yet tried using Snapshots. Sounds like they might indeed work well for this.

Waldok, glad my post was helpful. This whole thread will prove very useful to me, I’m sure, in guiding my thinking overall.