Why?
I may have mentioned that I'm rewriting the second novel wot I ever rit. The only problem is that I lost half of it a long time ago when I moved back to England. And now, after 177 pages I've come to the end of what I have and I've completely forgotten what happened next.
Well just write keep writing and it might all come back to you; or just write a new and exciting end, you might say. It's not as if I'm not without some experience after fifteen completed novels.
The thing is, though, I have a vague memory that the original end was exactly how I wanted it - even though although I can't remember how.
Now, back to the plot to annoy me. After rummaging around in the chaos that is my garage I found an original MS on a floppy disc, written in Word 2a. I know, a bit old and the 386 computer upon which it was written (the first PC I ever built) rusted away to nothing nearly two decades ago. But when I went to a computer shop the other day and asked if they had an external floppy drive, even the manager, the sixth person they questioned, gave me a look of utter vacancy.
"A what?" he asked as if I was demanding something like the egg of a Golden Orc or a piece of the missing link. His smile of disbelief, when I explained, nearly earned him a sore nose.
I'll find one. I really will. But then when I do and look at it, if I find that what's on there is the same as I have now, I'm going to scream and scream until I'm sick.
Two hours later.
I found a floppy disc reader - good old Maplins. And guess what, the floppy had even less of the book than I had on my computer. What a waste of thirty quid. Rats!
I have an external floppy drive, and I smile every time I see it (or the stack of disks I just can't bear to part with). I remember when they stopped putting them in computers - I was at a loss as to how you would transfer information without them. And now when I think about how much my flash drive will hold compared to those floppy disks (or the zip disk I still have somewhere), it blows my mind (and makes me feel a bit antique).
ReplyDeleteI don't feel antique. My daughter says I am, and what was it like living in the twenties before colour was invented, she asked with a sneer.
ReplyDeleteShe's gonna get a slap.