With the release of my latest book, Novel Concept, I had the urge to explain myself, I mean, examine the creative process and how this story came to be (see Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3).
 | Writing my book was kind of a willy-nilly affair. I don’t have some den to process my thoughts and put them to paper. I would write on the ferry, at lunch, during breaks, sometimes at home, but not so much. Essentially I reached a point where I had more time to type it at work than at home. At some point, when I decided to return to the partially-written manuscript, I started re-typing it into a work processor at work. |
To set the scene; our job, in those days, wasn’t big on technology. They only slowly, randomly rolled out Personal Computers as events warranted. My department was one that needed to get a PC on site. It was very basic. It didn’t even have MS Word. I had to get an early word processor and upload it myself to the PC. In hindsight, the company probably wouldn’t have appreciated this. On the other hand, I was now the only guy who could type up letters for people at work.
Anyway, I used my down time at work to retype what I had and continue on the manuscript anew. This was how I eventually finished it, saving it to a floppy disc (it would be wrong for me to save it on the company PC hard drive, right?) and carrying the disc around with me. That I would come to regret. This was before science had invented “back-up.”
So I was working on my manuscript. I was also working on something else (maybe work related, who can remember? I was multitasking). I hit save on the other project and saw the light flicker on the floppy drive. I don’t understand what happened, but somehow what I tried to save started to over-write on my novel files! I stopped it by ejecting it but the damage was done. Technically, I only lost about 4 chapters in total, but my spirit was broken. The rejections had been wearing me down, so this just finished me off. I couldn’t locate any print-outs of the pages. I didn’t have the money to see if a tech expert could retrieve the info. I had no desire to try and re-write the files.
Writing to me is a glorious act of magic. The idea of trying to re-create that magic just seemed beyond me. I could create, but the act of re-creating just sidelined me. I feebly attempted to copy and play around with the files to protect what remained. I, at various points, redid the pages that remained; re-formating them and trying, half-heartedly, to at least get the first couple of chapters together as sample pages to submit again. Hey, if someone liked it, that would be incentive to tackle the lost pages. No one liked it. So it sat on my hard drive for a lot of years. Every so often I’d check my parents’ garage or attic to see if I had stored some forgotten print-out of the pages. But there wasn’t much action on the novel front until…
Anyway, I used my down time at work to retype what I had and continue on the manuscript anew. This was how I eventually finished it, saving it to a floppy disc (it would be wrong for me to save it on the company PC hard drive, right?) and carrying the disc around with me. That I would come to regret. This was before science had invented “back-up.”
So I was working on my manuscript. I was also working on something else (maybe work related, who can remember? I was multitasking). I hit save on the other project and saw the light flicker on the floppy drive. I don’t understand what happened, but somehow what I tried to save started to over-write on my novel files! I stopped it by ejecting it but the damage was done. Technically, I only lost about 4 chapters in total, but my spirit was broken. The rejections had been wearing me down, so this just finished me off. I couldn’t locate any print-outs of the pages. I didn’t have the money to see if a tech expert could retrieve the info. I had no desire to try and re-write the files.
Writing to me is a glorious act of magic. The idea of trying to re-create that magic just seemed beyond me. I could create, but the act of re-creating just sidelined me. I feebly attempted to copy and play around with the files to protect what remained. I, at various points, redid the pages that remained; re-formating them and trying, half-heartedly, to at least get the first couple of chapters together as sample pages to submit again. Hey, if someone liked it, that would be incentive to tackle the lost pages. No one liked it. So it sat on my hard drive for a lot of years. Every so often I’d check my parents’ garage or attic to see if I had stored some forgotten print-out of the pages. But there wasn’t much action on the novel front until…
