I know that many of my readers have tackled large writing projects (books, dissertations, etc.), so I’m hoping you can help me out. As I begin my thesis, I can’t help but look at it as somewhat of a software development project. While the creative process is different, the machinations are similar: I’ll be adding or editing lines (of text) and referencing objects (citations), and I’ll be stylizing and formatting the material. It’s a development process, with different content.
Here’s the problem I face. With software development, I use version control and project management software (Trac), I’ve got multiple backups on different machines, I’ve got builds, tests, etc. With writing, I’ve got a binary file that just keeps getting bigger each day. I don’t have an automatic way of seeing multiple versions, I don’t have software that lets me see the changes between checkins, so on and so forth. This is what I’d generally think of as lacking a “sane” development environment, and it is worrying.
A quick note about my writing flow. For a number of reasons, I do most of my writing in Word. My final document is often processed in LaTeX, but the actual writing and saving parts are done in Word. The problem with this is the writing process is a black box; I can’t see what changes I’ve made every day, I don’t have sane merges, etc. I suppose I could have a semblance of this functionality if I just saved a new copy of the document each day, but the idea of searching through 50 copies of a document to figure out what day I added that part and what I was thinking is just nuts, especially when I compare it to the heads-up display I get with Trac.
I’m willing to adopt a new word processor, I’m willing to write a bunch of scripts that will manage a build process. On the other hand, I’m not willing to write my dissertation in TextEdit (which I suppose is the only real answer if I want to follow a development method, sigh). But since I am new at this, I figure there are some tools or tricks that I’m missing. What I’m looking for is sane versioning, integration with SVN a major plus (this would enable me to Trac my project), maybe some advice on methods or tools that have worked for you. My hope is that this post will help others who stumble upon it, so please consider leaving a comment about what worked for you, etc. Thank you!
