Your Deep Dark and Dusty Archives

[Perpetual Man]

Since being the kick up the bum I needed to start writing again, I've been working my way through old computer discs (floppy, CD, DVD and USB sticks, not to mention hard drives) trying to see what material I've still got lying around gathering virtual dust.

I have been ostensibly searching for short stories that can be reworked or tidied up, but it's hit me how much stuff is hidden away. From completed (first or second draft) novels to chapters, vague ideas, poems, character sketches, comic book scripts...

And I just wondered what everyone else has lying around out there that they may have forgotten about, put aside or just scribbled down and ignored.

I thought it might be interesting to put a few simple examples out there for a laugh - if someone really likes an idea it might be worth going back to!

 

[HareBrain]

What worries me is that there are some hard-copies of my early stuff floating around. If I ever become famous, I might have to have certain people tracked down and assassinated as a pre-emptive strike. Also, the library of the local university will have to be razed to the ground to remove my MA dissertation.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Most of my really old (as in, over 10 years old) unfinished stuff is hard-copy only, in a plastic storage crate under the bed. All I have on disc are some early attempts at the Elizabethan stuff that turned into the book I eventually sold, a short story that I plan on rewriting one day, and some fan fiction

 

[Susan Boulton]

Tonnes of stuff.

Five complete novels, lots of short stories etc. I also have some very early work which I want to look at, but can't. It is saved in windows 3.11 and I now can't open it. If anyone knows how to get the things open let me know.

The writing is rubbish, but the plot lines/ideas are worth saving.

 

[Anne Lyle]

What's the file extension on those Win 3.1 files? Is it one of those (laughably named) Microsoft Works files?

 

[Susan Boulton]

Microsoft Word Document (.DOC)

And it says it opens with Microsoft Office Word.

As I said the writing stinks, but the ideas are worth saving if I could actually see them. lol

 

[Perpetual Man]

The first of mine, which was a real laugh was a something I wrote when at school (so a loooong time ago).

It's half typed up (who had a computer in them thar days) and the rest is in long hand.

It was a rip-roaring (in my head anyway) SF adventure, with men in futuristic arm, with energy swords, shields, big guns, time travel and dinosaurs...

SJAB - I've a couple of those, I can open them, but when I do it's gibberish (Possibly no more gibberish what was there in the first place...)

 

[Mouse]

Most of my stuff I threw out when I packed for the move. It was all crap anyway and it was all written down as I'm also one of the 'never-had-a-computer-in-them-days' person, so I doubt I would've ever got round to typing it up.

Also have some old stuff on floppy disks, but as I don't have a floppy disk drive, I can't get to that either! It was mostly stuff about talking animals anyway.

 

[Perpetual Man]

There's nothing wrong with talking animals.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Microsoft Word Document (.DOC)

And it says it opens with Microsoft Office Word.

As I said the writing stinks, but the ideas are worth saving if I could actually see them. lol

So, is the problem that they won't open in current versions of Word, or that you don't have MS Office?

 

[Hex]

Almost nothing worth looking at. Just a few first-couple-of-pages/ maybe-this-is-a-good-idea notes (and some truly EXCRUCIATING poetry). It's mostly in a box in the attic. No one will ever find them there (no one can find anything in our attic).

 

[The Judge]

A box containing tatty notebooks of all sizes and states of decrepitude, including the cover and last few pages of a school work book (geography if I remember rightly -- the geographical contents long since consigned to the flames), and umpteen ad hoc folders with A4 sheets spilling out of them. I did have some disc-y things for a copywriter (?) on which I typed a lot of short stories about 15-20 years ago, but I sorted through them a couple of years back, printed the passable stories off and then destroyed the discs when we got rid of the machine.

 

[Nik]

I use to hand-type tales after the manuscript stage, then moved on to a 'portable electric'.My first word-processor ran on my Apple ][+ in 1979. I ported them as text-files via a serial interface to my first BBC Micro. My Acorn Archimedes could read the BBC's big floppies, and could write to DOS floppies. From there, the text-files have migrated as far as current twin 350 Gb Network Attached Storage drives.

I learned very early that proprietary file formats must be avoided at all costs. I even lost a Zip-drive archive because the format is now obsolete. I lost formatted tales because their Docs became corrupted...

Only .TXT endures.

And keep them in at least duplicate.

 

[Susan Boulton]

So, is the problem that they won't open in current versions of Word, or that you don't have MS Office?

Yep, they won't open with Microsoft Office Word 2003. I transferred them from floppy disc, onto my old computer to save them, when that one died I transferred them to this one by CD-Rom, never thinking to open or look at them, just wanted them safe.

This week I have been going through a lot of old stuff cherry picking ideas. I know there is at least one good plot line among the dross, but I can't get at it... I am talking badly-written stuff from 14 years ago here.

One old monster of a novel I am going to attack and strip out part of the story and re-work it, when and if I get time.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I don't think I have any old stuff on disks that I can't open -- I only lose pictures that way. But I do have hard copies, typed and handwritten and computer printouts on paper with holes on the sides, of lots of old stuff. I found some dubious Psychology papers from high school a while back, which was good for a laugh.

Nik, you can still get ZIP drives, I'm pretty sure without looking on eBay to confirm it. I have one on my computer at work, because we still have one client who sends their files on a ZIP disk. If my drive ever goes out, they're screwed, since it's the only one left in the building.

SJAB, have you tried opening those files with OpenOffice or NeoOffice? It would be worth a try.

 

[Sapheron]

I affectionately call my older writings 'the compost heap'. Some of the time it might be more accurate to call them 'the carpet'. Every so often some of them get put away, or thrown away, but mostly it all just hangs about on paper, on computer, everywhere, getting in the way of general life.

 

[MstrTal]

Um other than some of the more recent stuff on flash/thumb drive, SD drive and the "Cloud" most of my stuff is in notebooks and loose leaf. The only exception to this is a few Zip and 3.5s and one very lonely 5.25. The 5.25 has probably degraded to the point that it can never be read and even if it could I doubt there is a computer left in the world that has the proper software to open it.

I mean really who has a Tandy1000 with WordStar? I would need one or the other because my goofy self decided to use either Lotus or Tandy's built-in encryption feature to keep my little sister and dad from snooping and making fun of me.

Edit: Remembered the wrong Word Processor.

 

[Anne Lyle]

5.25"? Now that is retro! I don't even have any 3.5" floppies left...

 

[anthorn]

Well I have currently decided to write onto the computer, write plots and character arcs onto paper. Writing on the computer means I have less fragments and a 86 readability for a chapter and prologue. (rewriting Tracing the Shadow)

I have at least 10 seperate books planned out and I can use all my aborted W.I.Ps as a jump off. If I get published I am set for life.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Very wise, Anthorn! Just this week I blogged about the fact that it's really hard for a newly signed author to switch from writing at their own pace to writing on demand. Having a stock of ideas, or even better a heap of rough drafts, is a good plan!