Manuscripts in Cyberspace

It's early morning and blue light drifts into my writing space. I open a one subject, wide ruled spiral notebook and begin the first draft of chapter 10. Writing first drafts in longhand has always been my approach to writing in any genre. The words flow down my arm and out through my hand in blue swirls across the page. And any time I wish to review a few pages, find a certain scene that needs tweaking or check my scene notes, there they are inside the bright covers of the notebook.

Things can get tricky however when those character arcs, plot twists, and back stories are converted to documents in a word file on my computer.

I've been at work on this present novel for several years. Over that time plots and characters have changed and hopefully the whole has become better. But there are files, files and more files related to the varied forms of this novel. Some on the computer, some on a flash drive. Up until the passed few weeks this has worked okay. But I have been struggling with finding the first draft of the particular version I want to actually finish.

I have searched every document and folder for this draft and had not been able to find it. Until today!

I decided to do one more search and finally was able to seize the draft I was looking for. There it was in a file, in a folder within a folder that was inside a folder marked "saved folders." One hundred and sixty-five pages rescued from the ether. Two thirds of a first draft just waiting to be finished. As in the play "Six Characters in Search of an Author," my characters were waiting in cyberspace to see what was going to happen to them next. Lovers caught in mid-kiss wondering what that kiss would mean to their futures. An abused and pregnant teenager not sure if my protagonist would be able to save her or not.

Well, now those one hundred sixty-five pages are printed, hole punched and secure in a blue binder never to be lost again. And my poor characters will now, finally, discover what their futures will hold.

The document is also stored on the computer, in the cloud, and on a flash drive, hopefully never to be lost again.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story Behind Every Face

Writers are frequently asked where they get their ideas for stories or poems and the answers seem endless. Sources range from dreams, to news stories, to the ephemeral muse, to strange voices in the night. I never know the original source of my story ideas but I don't go looking for them, they seem to seek me out instead. They find me, grab me, reside in me, until I finally agree to write the story. I have notebooks filled with ideas for stories, poems, essays and art pages and if I had 24 hours a day, every day I'd never have enough time to write them all. Ideas are everywhere, at least for me. There are stories behind every face I see. Faces of family and friends. Faces of strangers in coffee shops and colleagues at work. No one is storyless. As the stories around me reveal themselves I see that this world is filled with stories. You never know what dramas--triumphs and defeats, joys and sorrows-- live behind the faces you see each day. Sometimes the stories come out of hid...
Read more

WRITING AT 30,000 FEET

I discovered a writing secret on my recent trip to LA. In the 757 aircraft the pressure equalizes, the lights dim, and the white noise of the engines is so loud it feels like it's coming from deep inside my own body. I've heard the safety instructions, eaten my take on board lunch, since sandwiches on the plane are too costly, and I've drunk enough water to keep me from getting a dehydration headache. I have also read several chapters in the novel I brought along on vacation and listened to Adele's album on my i-pod. There are several hours left of this cross country flight. I take out the spiral notebook I am using to write first draft chapters of my novel and here is where the secret reveals itself. Stuck in the plane at 35,000 feet about mountains and streams, nestled into the narrow, even for me, seat of the plane, strapped to my seat with few distractions, the story comes to me like a film on a 3-D screen. My characters' voices speak in my head, the movements...
Read more

CHALLENGE FAILED

No one likes to admit she failed, but in failure there always sleeps a lesson waiting to be aroused. I set out to post every day for the month of June based on one writing prompt or another. I wanted to write twenty minutes a day--a story, poem, or essay--and post it here. But as John Lennon said so well--life is what happens while you're making other plans. What lesson was asleep in this recent failed challenge of mine? Of course, the lesson is when you commit to something you need to follow through, but we all know that. And it is significant to the writer because you can't publish if you don't write. But there is another lesson that perhaps slept a little more deeply. The lesson, or question, of finding time to write so I can follow through on my commitments. I did find twenty minutes a day to write--exactly where I'd left them each morning. I've been a writer of "morning pages" a la Julia Cameron's suggestion in her book "The Artist's ...
Read more