I find that it entirely depends on my state of mind. Often, I have to start out writing by hand just to get a feel for the shape of the story. Once the words won't come quickly enough by hand, I know I'm ready to start typing. Sometimes I copy up what I've written out, sometimes I scrap it and start over. Usually, there has to be some part of the story in physical form in order for me to be able to really *see* it. Drabbles are almost always the result of handwriting and crossing out, so that I can see the whole thing at once. Seeing is really important to me - unless I know what shape and colour the story is, I can't do a damn thing. Often I have to write about 1000 words to chip away to the story I actually want to tell, and it's normally the fifth or so draft that turns out to be the one I need. Lengthy, but effective :S

I've worked with betas in google docs (literally - they've been editing while I'm writing. When there were three of them, I scrolled back up the page to find that they were happily arguing amonst themselves in 3 different colours o.O) but more often I like Word documents with lots of colours. One beta always works in pink, the other works in blue, and I use traffic light colours. It works for us!

My archiving sucks, and it's only when LJ crashes that I realise just how much of my stuff would be lost if the servers died forever. *clings to AO3 and Dreamwidth*