Writing on two computers?

4 replies

1. BBea Kowalczyk-Hart1 wk ago

   Option 1, with a USB stick that lives in my bag. Settings, Storage & data, Export .muse on the desk machine, Import .muse on the laptop. It shows you a summary of what's in the file before you commit, and saves a safety copy of the current library first.

   The discipline is the hard part, not the software. Import is a restore, not a merge: whichever file you bring in becomes the library. So the stick has a sticky note on it with the date and which machine it came off.

   Your licence covers both, by the way. An account can activate up to three computers.

2. MMarcus Delaney-Webb1 wk ago

   Allow me to put the case for the defence, since someone ought to. For fifteen years my manuscripts lived in a folder that synchronised itself between two machines, and on two occasions I opened the laptop to find two versions of the same chapter, each perfectly certain it was the real one. The second time I lost an entire evening establishing which paragraphs I had written in a staffroom and which at my own desk.

   A book that lives in one place, and which I copy deliberately, is not a limitation I resent. It is rather closer to how I was taught to think of a manuscript: there is one, and you know where it is. Option 3, Priya. Be a grown-up. I say this as a man who has declined to be one about most other things.

3. PPriya Natarajan1 wk ago

   @mdelaneywebb The grown-up option is the one I'm least likely to follow, which is presumably why I listed it third. Your two-versions story is exactly the thing I'd be scared a sync would do to me, though. Noted.

4. JJordan Ellery1 wk ago

   i do option 1 but by emailing the .muse file to myself like an absolute gremlin. shop laptop on my break, home laptop at night. hasn't gone wrong YET

5. SSophie Tremayne1 wk ago

   Option 2 here. I'll be straight about what it is and isn't, because I nearly didn't bother.

   It's a backup, not a sync. The docs say so in as many words. Each computer keeps its own library, and both back up to the same place a couple of minutes after you stop typing.

   What that looks like for me (desktop in the box room, laptop at swimming lessons):

   • open the laptop, it tells me which computer is ahead and offers the newer copy

   • if I've been daft and written on both, it shows the date and the computer name and asks which one to carry on from

   • whichever I pick, the other is kept. Nothing gets merged

   It's £6 a month. I run this as a business and one lost week means a late release, so for me it's an easy yes. For one book, a USB stick and Bea's sticky note are honestly fine.

6. BBea Kowalczyk-Hart1 wk ago

   @jordanwritesthings 'Hasn't gone wrong yet' is what every reporter I worked with said the week before the lawyers rang. At the very least, put the date in the filename.

7. PPriya Natarajan1 wk ago

   @kitaverillbooks This is really useful, thank you. 'Asks which to carry on from' is the part I cared about. A sync that quietly picked for me is Marcus's horror story, and I'd hate it too.

   So my actual request is narrower than I thought: a quicker way to hand the library across when I know which machine is ahead. Filed. Going back to my one computer like an adult.