Date your writing
That's the advice today. Date everything. If you haven't been dating your work, start now.
As I am working through my revisions, I realized that one of the best habits I built early in my writing days was dating all my drafts. I especially realized this when I encountered some very early things that were not dated. When were they written? Where do they go in the novel? Which order were they written in? I have no idea and spent way too much time working it out.
Date Your Writing.
That's it. That's the advice today. Date everything. If you haven't been dating your work, start now. Be consistent with the format as much as you can, but any date is better than none. Get used to doing it as the first thing when you sit down to write. Make it a habit.
And put it in the text, don't rely on the document info. That gets changed if the document gets copied. Ask me how I know.
If you don't do it for yourself, do it for your future biographer or the poor archivist who will have to go through your papers someday. Have pity on them. Have pity on future you. Date everything.
Just to drive the point home, here's Sam Delany from his Nits, Nips, Tucks, and Tips section of About Writing
"Twice now in thirty-five years I've found myself with a surprise anthology contract from a major publisher and gone hunting through a pile of old stories people have left with me for one I remembered that would have been perfect for the proposed book. I found the story—but because the writer had not put a name and address on it, I had no way to know who the story was by or how to get in touch with him or her. Thus I couldn't publish it...Putting your name, address, place, and date on all your manuscripts seems so simple and obvious that I'm astonished how many would-be writers still don't do it. In terms of advancing your career, there's no better way than leaving your name off the manuscript to make sureyou remain a would-be writer." p.375, Appendix
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Photo Credit: via US Library of Congress. Horydczak, Theodor, approximately 1890-1971, photographer. Calendars. Desk calendar II. ca. 1920-ca. 1950. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2019677632/. Image cropped.
