Lately, I have been thinking about submissions. I thought I'd send out a few of my finished works while I continue works in progress.
I started venturing through my stories. After several computer crashes I've had stories saved in various places, one main place in particular. I checked there and all my stuff was still as I had left it. Unfortunately, there were a few stories that I had made edits to, after receiving feedback from my writing group. It looks like I didn't resave the files on my back-up after my edits. So more work is lost.
I either need to set up a schedule to save my items on back-up or remember to start saving them once I'm done with them.
The good news is that, when it comes to my writing, I'm a pack rat. I never throw away notes or drafts. So I still have all the notes and input from writing group. It's just a bummer to have to do the work over again.
Sometimes I feel like I'm spinning in circles.
Currently reading: Memoirs of a Geisha
Currently watching: Biggest Loser
Just watched: Star Trek
Showing posts with label lost work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lost work. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Not as far back in the day but still...
As promised the bits and pieces of what I can remember about the lost work of the second half of my life so far.
In 10th grade I wrote that poem with the awesomest opening line, 'she's in love with herself' but that's all I remember about that except the rest of it sucked.
In 11th grade I wrote this crazy story about a penguin. I remember it was inspired by my friend who had a stuffed penguin and one time a bunch of us got annoyed with her carrying it around all the time so we thought we'd do funny things like throw it down the stairs, or microwave it since we assumed penguins didn't like heat, then we put the stuffed penguin in the freezer to make it feel better. (We were in high school that's all I can really say.) Anyway, the next Monday in class we had to write a story and then let the person next to us read it, which happened to be my penguin loving friend. So I rewrote the events of the weekend but the penguin jumped off a cliff trying to fly rather than being thrown down the stairs, he was dropped in a volcano, and then returned to his natural habitat. Awful story, I know, but hilarious to me and my friend. Our teacher thought we were idiots, I'm sure. Not that I would want it back to do anything with it. I think it would just be funny to have around. Or maybe not.
In 12th grade I took advance composition, which required a lot of writing. Other than a journal, that I still have, I don’t remember many of the assignments except for one that took up almost a whole marking period. It’s also the only class I regret failing but I was in a different place back then. My priorities were messed up.
Anyway, we had to write plays that we were going to enter into a competition but I never completely finished mine.
My story was an anti-feel good teen show, where everything works out in the end. So in case you couldn’t follow that not everything worked out in the end of mine. Well not for everyone anyway.
When I got the assignment I remember being really mad at my “best friend” for liking and pursuing a guy who was an absolute jerk to me and some of my other friends.
To vent my frustration I wrote a play where two friends are torn apart by one liking, and later dating, a complete ass. The other friend dates a rebellious guy but later dumps him when she finds out he was and still is childhood friends with the same ass.
Then the “best friend” gets dumped by the jerk after he gets her pregnant and she begs the other friend for help. Sadly, the other friend doesn’t forgive and forget so easily and she turns her back.
In the end everyone is alone and miserable. I think I called it “This Isn’t Dawson’s Creek, Get Over It”. Obviously, I was filled with a lot of teenage angst and rebellion or something.
I had to write an outline and three different drafts. I’m not entirely sure what happened to any of it because as I’ve said my priorities were in crazy directions when it came to this class and my life at this point.
As for work after my school years, a while a back I started writing Double Take. I had this really long wordy version that was nearly twenty pages long. My computer crashed before I saved it and I lost most of it. It was on the old school laptop that has filled in for me on numerous occasions. And I didn’t know about temporary back up files at the time. Then later it was wiped completely clean in hopes to make it better. So that’s lost in oblivion as well.
And there was once a much longer, more dialogue filled, 6 issue, actionless, complete piece of crap version of the infamous comic book that I still cling to. I saved it on a floppy disk that ended much the same way as my flash drive. “This disk has not been formatted”. At the time I had no idea you could potentially retrieve the stuff. So I started over, changed character names, story lines and so much stuff to make a definitely better version. At least I think so. The world may never know. I do still have the notebook that I wrote the original version in, so it’s not completely lost but it was changed a bit when I typed it in originally.
In 10th grade I wrote that poem with the awesomest opening line, 'she's in love with herself' but that's all I remember about that except the rest of it sucked.
In 11th grade I wrote this crazy story about a penguin. I remember it was inspired by my friend who had a stuffed penguin and one time a bunch of us got annoyed with her carrying it around all the time so we thought we'd do funny things like throw it down the stairs, or microwave it since we assumed penguins didn't like heat, then we put the stuffed penguin in the freezer to make it feel better. (We were in high school that's all I can really say.) Anyway, the next Monday in class we had to write a story and then let the person next to us read it, which happened to be my penguin loving friend. So I rewrote the events of the weekend but the penguin jumped off a cliff trying to fly rather than being thrown down the stairs, he was dropped in a volcano, and then returned to his natural habitat. Awful story, I know, but hilarious to me and my friend. Our teacher thought we were idiots, I'm sure. Not that I would want it back to do anything with it. I think it would just be funny to have around. Or maybe not.
In 12th grade I took advance composition, which required a lot of writing. Other than a journal, that I still have, I don’t remember many of the assignments except for one that took up almost a whole marking period. It’s also the only class I regret failing but I was in a different place back then. My priorities were messed up.
Anyway, we had to write plays that we were going to enter into a competition but I never completely finished mine.
My story was an anti-feel good teen show, where everything works out in the end. So in case you couldn’t follow that not everything worked out in the end of mine. Well not for everyone anyway.
When I got the assignment I remember being really mad at my “best friend” for liking and pursuing a guy who was an absolute jerk to me and some of my other friends.
To vent my frustration I wrote a play where two friends are torn apart by one liking, and later dating, a complete ass. The other friend dates a rebellious guy but later dumps him when she finds out he was and still is childhood friends with the same ass.
Then the “best friend” gets dumped by the jerk after he gets her pregnant and she begs the other friend for help. Sadly, the other friend doesn’t forgive and forget so easily and she turns her back.
In the end everyone is alone and miserable. I think I called it “This Isn’t Dawson’s Creek, Get Over It”. Obviously, I was filled with a lot of teenage angst and rebellion or something.
I had to write an outline and three different drafts. I’m not entirely sure what happened to any of it because as I’ve said my priorities were in crazy directions when it came to this class and my life at this point.
As for work after my school years, a while a back I started writing Double Take. I had this really long wordy version that was nearly twenty pages long. My computer crashed before I saved it and I lost most of it. It was on the old school laptop that has filled in for me on numerous occasions. And I didn’t know about temporary back up files at the time. Then later it was wiped completely clean in hopes to make it better. So that’s lost in oblivion as well.
And there was once a much longer, more dialogue filled, 6 issue, actionless, complete piece of crap version of the infamous comic book that I still cling to. I saved it on a floppy disk that ended much the same way as my flash drive. “This disk has not been formatted”. At the time I had no idea you could potentially retrieve the stuff. So I started over, changed character names, story lines and so much stuff to make a definitely better version. At least I think so. The world may never know. I do still have the notebook that I wrote the original version in, so it’s not completely lost but it was changed a bit when I typed it in originally.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Back in the day
Okay I'm finally sitting down to type a long and, hopefully, interesting blog post for the first time during NaBloPoMo and it's about time too since it's nearly half way over.
So with my computer crashing a billion times this year and the trouble that I had with my flash drive, I got to thinking a lot about losing work and work that I had already lost.
Now that I take writing seriously I save different drafts and revisions of all my stuff but when I was younger I kind of just lost or threw out anything that I wrote. There are lots of reason I didn't keep stuff other than thinking that I didn't need it for anything or that it was crap. I had personal reasons that had to do with other people reading the stuff, especially my most personal stuff like journals, which may be how my paranoia of such things started. I ended up purposely getting rid of some stuff.
Recently, I decided to think back and try to remember anything I might have written but don't have anymore. Here's what I came up with in somewhat chronological order.
Today's entry will feature the first half of my life, until I was approximately 12ish and then tomorrow's will have everything after that.
In 5th grade science class we had to write a story for some reason or another. I chose to write a story about people who cut down all the trees and then there was no oxygen left. They all died or fled to another planet except for one little boy who tried to warn them and had secretly been raising his own trees.
Then in 7th grade English class we had to write a story probably because that's a big part of what you do in English class. Anyway, I wrote a story about a woman named Paula who married a man named Paul and then got a bunch of credit cards in his name, which she was able to use because there names were so close. Paul wasn't the first guy she had tricked into this scam either.
I was so onto identity theft before it was huge. How clever am I?
8th grade was when I really thought about becoming a writer. I didn't start directly with fiction, in fact it was the year I got really into rock music. So I was going to learn to play the guitar and start a rock band. And I wrote a bunch of song lyrics, none of which I can remember.
I also started writing my first novel that would never be finished, so rather my first idea for a novel. And it was about an abused child that kills herself. Not really the cleverest plot but that's about all I remember except I think I was going to title it Unforgiven.
Other than that I'm sure there were tons of stories and papers that I had to write. I wish I could remember more. I know that I did some non-fiction stuff too. I wrote for the class paper in the 5th grade and the school paper in the 8th grade. I doubt I wrote anything deep and profound. In fact, I'm pretty sure that in 5th grade I shared the advice column with my best friend at the time. I wonder what kind of advice we gave people.
Well stay tuned tomorrow. Since it wasn't as long ago, I remember the stories in more detail. Although, I can't say they are much better.
So with my computer crashing a billion times this year and the trouble that I had with my flash drive, I got to thinking a lot about losing work and work that I had already lost.
Now that I take writing seriously I save different drafts and revisions of all my stuff but when I was younger I kind of just lost or threw out anything that I wrote. There are lots of reason I didn't keep stuff other than thinking that I didn't need it for anything or that it was crap. I had personal reasons that had to do with other people reading the stuff, especially my most personal stuff like journals, which may be how my paranoia of such things started. I ended up purposely getting rid of some stuff.
Recently, I decided to think back and try to remember anything I might have written but don't have anymore. Here's what I came up with in somewhat chronological order.
Today's entry will feature the first half of my life, until I was approximately 12ish and then tomorrow's will have everything after that.
In 5th grade science class we had to write a story for some reason or another. I chose to write a story about people who cut down all the trees and then there was no oxygen left. They all died or fled to another planet except for one little boy who tried to warn them and had secretly been raising his own trees.
Then in 7th grade English class we had to write a story probably because that's a big part of what you do in English class. Anyway, I wrote a story about a woman named Paula who married a man named Paul and then got a bunch of credit cards in his name, which she was able to use because there names were so close. Paul wasn't the first guy she had tricked into this scam either.
I was so onto identity theft before it was huge. How clever am I?
8th grade was when I really thought about becoming a writer. I didn't start directly with fiction, in fact it was the year I got really into rock music. So I was going to learn to play the guitar and start a rock band. And I wrote a bunch of song lyrics, none of which I can remember.
I also started writing my first novel that would never be finished, so rather my first idea for a novel. And it was about an abused child that kills herself. Not really the cleverest plot but that's about all I remember except I think I was going to title it Unforgiven.
Other than that I'm sure there were tons of stories and papers that I had to write. I wish I could remember more. I know that I did some non-fiction stuff too. I wrote for the class paper in the 5th grade and the school paper in the 8th grade. I doubt I wrote anything deep and profound. In fact, I'm pretty sure that in 5th grade I shared the advice column with my best friend at the time. I wonder what kind of advice we gave people.
Well stay tuned tomorrow. Since it wasn't as long ago, I remember the stories in more detail. Although, I can't say they are much better.
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