Well that's the general plan...
I've bought my portable hard drive so I now have an ultimate back-up; as I retype my Nottinghamshire short novel it's being saved onto it as well as the memory stick.
(Plus anything else I don't want to lose has been saved.)
Three forms of saving must be enough?
As friends on Facebook will have seen, I discovered that not only had I lost the first three chapters of draft 2, I had lost the whole 1st draft too.
The situation could have been horrible, but as mentioned last time, I print out each chapter as I complete it, so there is a copy of the completed first draft to work from.
Surprisingly I didn't panic, that is after the initial moment of horror at discovering the file was gone.
Rather than retyping the 1st draft again- which would take me too long- I decided the most practical solution is to retype the first three chapters from draft 2 (as planned), then once I start chapter four I'll rewrite using my print copy and the notes I'd previously made for draft 2.
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| The way forward... |
As I read through and retype I've also started compiling reminder notes on a file card for each chapter. Not something I've tried before, but in the circumstances I thought I'd see if it helps with the rewriting and editing of future drafts.
Being open to new ideas is good. Which now ties into the poetry item...
I attended a short workshop about writing poetry (last night at the writers' club). The aim of the session was to encourage the attendees that even if they didn't think they could write a poem, they could discover methods that would help them do so.
Negativity was not allowed.
Admittedly by the end of the evening I was quite enthusiastic about working on the last poem I wrote, about an old glass bottle with the chemist's name - we were given a selection of objects to choose from and the little glass bottle immediately drew my attention.
Whether I can actually make a decent poem out of it I have no idea, but I said I'd try.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles & www.freedigitalphotos.net
