Wednesday 27 March 2013

A Temporary Halt in Progress...

I've been making steady progress on my novella but have now come to a temporary halt.

Why?

Because my floppy disk reader has gone astray - I know one of the family borrowed it, but can't remember who, and I know they'll all deny they ever had it, or if they did they gave it back.

If they'd given it back then I would have known where it was!!!

When I first got the idea for the novella I had a scene in my head, which I wrote down, and saved for later. At the time I was still using floppy disks as my computer tower didn't have a Cd/DVD drive.

Now I intended to transfer everything over, but just didn't get round to it, and yes, you've guessed it, the scene that I saved onto the floppy (at least it's on one of them) is now needed to refer to...

This week I've been dealing with a lot of introspection with my heroine, Sarah. She's at a turning point both emotionally and mentally, which makes writing tiring. Plus I'm having to jiggle the content on a couple of chapters around because of how the story has actually developed around the scenes in my mind.

No doubt some of Sarah's soul searching will eventually be edited out, but this missing scene belongs here at the point I have now reached in my manuscript. I know I'll rewrite the scene anyway, but the details are being elusive.

The version on the floppy is from about 8 years ago, and my brain seems to work like this: once it's typed onto the screen, and saved, the details go into brain deep storage- perhaps my memory just deletes them entirely because it knows the information has been recorded somewhere, so it's no longer in stand-by.

Weird idea, I know. But that's how it seems to me... :-)

With Easter week almost here and the family being around, my opportunities for concentrated writing will be brief, so I think I better make sure I get these floppy disks sorted, so as soon as my normal routine can be restarted, I'll be able to get on with the story.

So my total so far this month, 4, 553 words, but I have to admit that 200 of those were for a flash fiction piece for the March, One Word Challenge on the writers-online Talkback forum. And the character in that story has more tales to tell but that's for another day- they're contemporary rather than historical...

The 5,000 words a month remains unfulfilled, but it continue to be an on-going target. Smiley

smiley from: http://www.freesmileys.org/

4 comments:

liz young said...

By "Members of your family" do you mean children? Am adult shouldn't have a problem saying, "Oh sorry, I'll get it now," and a child/teen might react better to something non-confrontational like, "There's a scene I need on that floppy disc you borrowed, can you fetch it please?" Don't let the beggars hold you back!

Rosemary Gemmell said...

Think you need to transfer your work in progress onto a memory stick, Carol!

Carolb said...

More likely my husband, Lizy. He did say he remembered seeing it when I asked (and it wasn't in the usual location) - he did start looking, but he didn't know where it now was.

I suspect it was put down somewhere with the intention of giving it back to me, so it's probably under a pile of books or magazines somewhere...

Fortunately, Rosemary, I save all my works in progress to a memory stick- each has an attached label with the project name on it and kept in a box close to my desk.

If I can find the floppy reader I'll be able to find the missing scene.
And I will make sure I transfer any other writing onto the computer or a disc asap. :-)

liz young said...

After two days of wondering where that scene has got to, perhaps you can write it from memory? After all, you'd be editing as you went anyway, so a change of words won't matter!