How do you name your files?

I just name it—I mean—whatever the title of the poem. ... I number them. Sometimes, I'll have, you know, "such-and-such a title one," "such-and-such a title two,"... But when it gets too confusing, sometimes I'll just erase the old ones. ... I do have a back up on a zip drive, but I haven't backed-up for several months. So, I'm careless.

I know where, what's what, and I started organizing them by year on my computer. So under "My Documents," I have a file called "Poems." Within it I'll have—I don't know if you can see this—"2011," "2012," "2013," drafts of my book manuscript, All Soul Parts Returned, various other things. Within "2013," I have "Early summer 2013," "Ecclesiastes," "January 2013," "Late Summer 2013," things like that.

The (file) names change, because I was so happy when I realized that you could change the names. ... I have Carbonite. ... I've gone through all different kinds of back-up things. I've had all different kinds of viruses and crashes and-you know. ... I got religious about backing up.

One document. ... The date and the notebook. So, the notebooks are numbered. It'll be from Notebook 23, or something like that. ... (A final draft) would have the title of the poem, and then the highest number of the draft of that poem would be the most current one—the one that's replaced the others. ... On Wednesday, I'm told by our tech, that what's there gets backed up. So, Wednesday about 2:00AM, or something like that, and on Thursday at 2:00AM, some back-up takes place. So, that's all I know about it.

I number my drafts DR1, sometimes DR0 if I know it's not going to last long. I've gone up to DR87. I think in some things I've gone up to DR104 in the file menu. ... I have a Dropbox account and I have a 2 TB amazingly small little white brick external hard drive that backs up automatically.

I try to do them in terms of the draft numbers. Like, I will save the title. Sometimes, I'll put the date if it seems germane, but I will put numbers so that the first draft that goes on the computer is "1," and so forth. ... (The folder is named) "Poems 2012-" because that was when I finished my last book of poems. So they're kind of arranged by book. ... I hope (my computer) has a back up system on it-I think it does. I think it backs it up automatically.

At some point it's the name of the poem, or it's a name that references the name of the poem. For a long time, I will do revisions within that file with the date at the top. ... Then, at the point of a manuscript, there's a whole file that's an entire manuscript and those will have dates or something, you know, called "1, 2, 3," or something. ... I back that up onto a flash drive and then I have this sync toy stuff that Microsoft makes for its computers. So I have that on there, and so I sync that onto there. That works okay. Then I have a little wallet backup drive that I try to put from there onto that, but it doesn't work as well.

My folder is called "Poems." ... Each poem is its own file until I really start to make the book as a book. ... I do use Dropbox but… Not really so much for backup, but to send things to people. I do have a back-up drive.

There is a poem under a particular title and that's it. Or, there is a manuscript under a particular title. ... I no longer have an external hard drive. Back when I had a PC I had an external hard drive where I backed up everything from the hard drive of the computer onto an external drive. Now, I put things into the cloud, the iCloud. I back stuff up on Mozy just to keep track.