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A Bear of very little brain

edited July 2014 in Writing
A very odd thing just happened. Mr Bear has just come back from the repository that is our second house next door with a large file containing a novel in progress. It's my work, with my red scribbles on it, and there are at least five chapters. I don't remember any of it. It seems to be jolly good; I wonder if it will be Regency Romance No. 2? How bizzare.

Comments

  • And how exciting!

    I've rediscovered some of my old stuff - almost as if it's written by an imposter.

  • How very lovely. It's as though someone's done all the slog for you, but you can revel in the glory!
  • What a nice surprise! I find when I read some of my earlier work it seems to have been written by someone else completely. It's a strange feeling isn't it?
  • That is a little odd. But hey, you're a writer - odd is normal.
  • I picked up my MSc dissertation the other day.
    Couldn't understand a word of it.
    I think I used to be much cleverer than I am now (I know - not a very high bar.)
  • Gordon Bennet, that has happened to me, I once found a poem i really liked and it was ages before I realised it must be mine... I still don't like to use it in case it isn't...
  • Been there, done that, Heather! (Although mine was an MA.)
  • Yes, it's really strange reading your own earlier work because it doesn't have your developed voice, but you can still catch glimpses of it beginning...
  • MSc and MMA knock my O levels into a cocked hat so I won't talk about not even understaning the questions now, let alone having no b....y chance of answering them.

    I too find stuff I've written and forgotten about. Strangest of all are the middle of the night notes - you know, those strokes of genius that must be written down at 3am. Someone comes along when I've gone back to sleep and turns them into cr*p.
  • Oh, oh, Lizy, please, some of my best ideas have turned out to be crap.
  • I read all five chapters last night. I don't remember the words, and the whole thing had incredibly few typos or editables; but I could immediately see in my mind the house where one scene takes place. And I remembered writing a scene about claustrophobia. Oddly the heroine has a love of rose-growing, something that never interested me until we moved here and I took cuttings when we had to lose some old bushes. I wrote the thing about eight years ago, I think. Definitely worth finishing.
  • Yay! The next project falls into your lap - you must be well-beloved by the gods.
  • What a lovely surprise. I wish I could find a half-written masterpiece among my old bits. :-)
  • I think you might be delving into the wrong area, Casey...
  • We should all regularly check our bits. Who knows what's lurking...

    I forget absolutely everything.

    I've started to forget birthdays even though I've always been really good at remembering them. I forgot to send my daughter's school report slip back, to pre-pay for an activity before the due date, to book theatre tickets for my daughter's show. I forget to reply to emails, forget what I've been writing. I even forget to write the lists to remind me of what I need to do.

    What will I be like in twenty years?
  • I never, ever sent a school report slip back. My kids always brought the reports, I trust them even if the school didn't. No-one EVER queried it - as I thought, merely a 'show' to make you think they are on the ball.
  • TN, that's known in this house as Swiss Cheese Brain. I'm in the next stage now where I remember really useless information I have learned once in passing at some point in the last 58 years. Useful for General Knowledge crosswords, not much call for it otherwise.
  • Ah, as long as it has a label, I'm happy.
  • Ah, so it's Emmental problem.

    (Sorry)
  • Get thee to the Pun Thread!
  • I've checked my bits - no - nothing there :-(
  • Everything I have is on my computer. Nothing in longhand at all - I used to print everything out but now there is too much.
  • Do you have backup copies on another hard drive or computer in case your main computer/laptop shoud fail?
  • I recently found a couple of poems I'd forgotten about, which was a nice surprise because they weren't too bad (I began writing-life with getting a few poems published, but haven't bothered writing many in years).

    A couple of times I've looked back at short stories I haven't seen for a long time and can't work out how I even conceived the ideas. Same with my university essays. Like Heather, I sometimes feel like I've lost a few brain cells along the way -- but that's only in the last decade.
  • Regarding backups, what I do is back up my entire writing folder (poetry, novels, short stories, list of submissions, any research) onto two USB memory sticks on a regular basis, and ocassionally onto an external hard drive. I keep one of the memory sticks on my person wherever I go, and one in a fireproof safe.
  • Do you have backup copies on another hard drive or computer in case your main computer/laptop shoud fail?
    Yes, Stan. The mac backs up its whole self, even applications, every night, and keeps a copy of every day for the past week and then every week back for a while then every month.

    So if you can't find something, or throw it away by accident, or change something and want the former version, you can go back to last week in the time machine and your desk as it was a week go is in front of you. Then you can find what was lost and bring it back fro the past into today.

    But mac is so reliable and so good at finding things I have never had to use it.

    BUT if the computer dies, everything I have ever done is on the Time capsule hard drive which can be downloaded into any other (mac) computer.

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