A Tale of Two Versions

As every author knows, you often end up with multiple versions of a novel's manuscript on your computer. Mine go something like this;

Version 1 is the really rough one. Often doesn't have much formatting in it, no speech marks, sometimes notes instead of proper sentences.

Version 2 is the first polish. Fills out the story, gets formatted, looks much more 'proper'. Usually ends up hanging together as a story much better. 

Version 3 is often the 'voice' version, where I really get into my character's head and often rewrite sections from their point of view. It's really where the story comes alive, and often the one that gets sent to beta readers - or the publisher if I'm feeling really confident about it.

Well...

You remember I had a bit of a rough time just before Tilda #2 was published and launched? (It went great, by the way - a few issues that others might like to learn from, but I'll blog about that another time).  I was working on Version 3 of Tilda #3. I'd found a few glitches and worked out some issues, but took a break from the third novel to give Tilda and the Mines of Pergatt a really good start.

After the launch, I picked Tilda #3 back up - and realised that, although I had begun working on a third version, at some point I'd switched to Version 2 of Tilda #3 to continue working on. 

This means I now have a beginning of Tilda #3, Version 3 that's been tightened and put into Tilda's voice, and a middle of Tilda #3, Version 2, that's had the same treatment. 

You'd think it would be simple to fix - just combine the two bits of the different versions and carry on, yeah? 

Nope. 

Cos when I was working on Version 2 more recently, I was grappling with some issues that had implications for the earlier part of the novel - and I went back in Version 2 to change them. This makes it VERY complicated to use Word's combine/compare function, and I decided not to go down that route for fear of complicating matters even further.

I'm left with two versions of the same novel, neither of which is the most up-to-date on its own.

This has resulted in me printing out a hard copy of Version 3 and transferring any sections I changed in that to Version 2 on the computer, mainly because Version 2 is the larger file which suggests there is more content in it. The result is Tilda #3, Version 4. 

It is slow, painstaking work to correct. Every now and again I come across a section and I don't know which version has the most recent changes in it - both sound OK. As a result, Version 4 - in places - has ended up with something entirely different again. Hopefully it'll all come together in the end. 

I'm just thankful I realised before I sent anything off to the publisher... 

Half a polished novel, anyone? 

At least I don't have this many versions on the go...