I know. File management sounds like the most boring topic in the world, and it really might be.

But a lot of writers don't have any system for keeping track of their work and that ultimately ends up costing a lot of time and leading to confusion down the road, especially when you're dealing with a long-form project like a script, screenplay or book that is going to require multiple drafts. I actually think that ignoring draft numbers or dates might be a way of staying in denial about how much work is really involved in the project.

But whether your reasons are psychological, motivational or just never thought about it, my advice is to put up with a little annoying non-creative organization at the beginning of your project, then you never have to think about it again! I recommend this simple 2-step protocol:

It seems like right now almost everybody has a story to tell. This is like the Age of Memoirs.

My theory is that post-Watergate we realized that we can't trust the government. Post-911 we feel like we can't really trust the media to know (or tell us) what's really going on either. So who can you trust? Only the personal testimony of credible individuals.

To me that explains the rise of the written memoir, the continued popularity of This American Life, the spread of alternative comedy including Un-Cabaret, live storytelling shows and personal essay reading nights like Say the Word, The Moth, Sit 'n' Spin, Afterbirth, Mortified and others across the country, plus wider trends like blogs, user reviews, tweets and the surge of subjective news like Jon Stewart.

So what about your memoir? If you're interested, I've worked with an number of first-time writers to plan, write and re-write their stories and have developed a simple 5-step plan (which I also think would work for any book project). Here it is: