Over the last week, I've been working on my room. Working is a polite euphemism for wading through piles of papers. One particular pile is about three inches thick and the best I can tell contains at least five different versions of the same book.And I do mean different. It would have been nice if I had numbered them or something intelligent, but no, I didn't even change the titles. Of course they were written back before the days of the BIG floppy disks. Fortunately, I printed them out--on a dot-matrix printer. And in spots the print is faded.
In a spiral notebook, I found yet another book beginning with maps, family lists, village names, and other assorted information. It was like stumbling across a treasure map. There was even a primitive outline.
So my question is...where do your old stories go to hideout? And what was your best find years later?
anny
They're all on a fly drive no bigger than my thumb...no paper for me
ReplyDeleteMost are on a flash drive, but I do have a filing cabinet with a bunch too!
ReplyDeleteI had one book that was on an Apple IIc. I printed it before we got rid of the computer then I scanned it in about 5 years ago. It's in reasonable shape to look at -- but boy, is the writing lousy!
ReplyDeleteMost of my drafts are on the computer in a file folder called "Not Sure". There's three books that have multiple drafts. I renamed them with the year of the draft and I printed them so I could tell which was which. Not sure if any of that stuff is usable.
Now I try to do one draft, and that's it. If I snip out a scene, it goes into a file called, gee, "Snips". I *hate* wading through Stuff.
I have a file cabinet which holds nearly everything I wrote from age 11. I have a stack of notebooks on a shelf which hold snippets and beginnings from the past ten or so years, plus an entire floppy disk collection I computerized starting in 1994. There's a stack of CD copies when floppies were becoming obsolete...and now I have a flash drive, copies on my hard drive, and saved in a computer-backup system.
ReplyDeleteOh, and let's not forget the 3-ring binder, somewhere in storage, which holds my 20+ poems over the years...that will be the 'gem' when I find it again:)
files. notepads. flashdrives. lost forever because i was sure I'd remember it then forgot to write it down...
ReplyDeleteI still have a book that I typed on a manual typewriter filed away in a box in the attic, LOL!
ReplyDeleteThese days I put story ideas and deleted scenes, etc in computer files and hope I back them up--but I usually write them down first in a spiral notebook, so I've got a file cabinet full of stuff that you've just reminded me that I need to wade through. Thanks Annie:-)
My old manuscripts are stored in either 3 ring binders or document boxes. Circle of Wolves was my best revival. I wrote it in one form about four or five years before it ever saw a publisher. I pulled it back out after Measure of Healing was accepted and rewrote it. I just finished editing a short story that's going to be included in a charity anthology.
ReplyDelete