Tonight, the unthinkable happened.
I lost a file.
I've been ignoring Wake for a while, mainly because I'd decided to do Requiem for my Nano experiment (which failed miserably, but that's another story) but I've been on a bit of a "spaceships are fucking awesome" kick lately, so I wanted to write a bit for Wake.
Can't find it.
Really, when it comes down to it, I'm the least organised person in the universe. I'd take a photo of my desk - complete with books piled everywhere, a netbook, a laptop and a desktop computer, two external harddrives, a tangle of wires, and a bunch of other things that really should have been thrown out or put away a long time ago. The netbook's presence is justifiable for reasons that I'll get to, but anyway...
I try to keep my files a little neater. There are folders for Fan Fiction and regular Fiction, folders for works in progress, folders for different fandoms, etc. It's actually easier for Fan Fiction, because I usually don't end up writing seventeen different versions of the same story because it's not working for how I'm feeling that day (Seriously - The Lost Prophecies of Smiley the Frogman is both my greatest love, and my greatest nightmare, but I'll get to that later too).
So there are 3 different versions of Wake. One that starts in first person, and then jumps to third person with a character name that I changed. One that actually uses a character that got moved to Requiem (two characters got moved to Requiem, actually, but I was planning on fixing one of those tonight and now I can't). The third one is probably closest to what I was looking for, but it's super-short, and was rewritten again anyway.
The fourth version - the one I want - is nowhere to be found. I scoured the harddrive, and the pendrive (where all the writing lives), I booted the desktop up to check that too, and I brought out the netbook. Wherein begins the problem.
The netbook is fried.
Has been for a few weeks - I took it back to the store where I got it, and they said "try and get some of your data off it, and then bring it back, because we are going to wipe that sucker like it's yesterday's jam." And anyway, to cut a long story short, I got off some stuff, and then the city flooded, so getting it back to the store was a bit of a problem. Still haven't been back. Should probably do that. Kinda glad I didn't, though, because if I lose this file...
Well, it's not a super big loss.
It's, I think, a couple of thousand words max, and I didn't really like it anyway. Wake is a fun little story about torture and horrifying shit, and waking up in the future with no arm, and it wasn't quite doing what it was supposed to do, so I was going to work on it tonight, because if there's something more fun than writing a badass vampire-sorcerer who's pissed off, it's writing a badass cyborg who's pissed off (I kinda sense a theme here).
Still trying to get access to the netbook, but no dice.
The important thing, though, is that I went through my original fic folder (not including the latest addition, just in its infancy, about a guy that gets hit by an exploding tank and turns into a superhero. Powerful stuff). It happens to all of us, I think (I hope) - you get bored one night, and start going through old stuff, concussed by the sledgehammer of nostalgia, and in some cases, the horror of "did I really used to write like that?" It happens with photos, too, only much less horrific.
Anyway, I digress.
As mentioned before, The Lost Prophecies of Smiley the Frogman is my greatest love, and my greatest nightmare. It's the story I've been working on for the last six years, and it's the story I'll be working on for the next twenty. It's the story that I'm never really happy with, and yet the core plot remains the same. In my fic folder, there are twenty-five word documents alone relating to this story, plus a couple of photoshops. Some of the files are copies of each other in a different file format (I have no idea why some of these are in .rtf) but most of them are rewritten versions of the same story.
At it's heart, The Lost Prophecies of Smiley the Frogman is a comedy. It's the kind of story that, if it's written the wrong way, it turns it the world's biggest trainwreck. Epic sci-fi can be great stuff, written seriously, but I don't know if I'd call this one science fiction. It's the stuff born of teenage imagination, like axe-wielding ninjas who ride dinosaurs. Actually, I don't think the story has any of those. What it does have is aliens, mutants, gods, immortals, superheroes, ghosts, vampires, werewolves and spaceship captains. What is has is love, betrayal, amnesia, war, death and muffins.
One of the files is a synopsis. It's been a long time since I've used a synopsis, because I tend to ignore them completely and just do whatever my brain wants to do, which is why I think this story has so many files. Even it needs rewriting, because some of the concepts, even for comedy story, are, to be completely honest, utter shit. Stuff that crosses the line from kinda weird into completely stupid. But that's not the important thing. The important thing is, the synopsis is 17,000 words long. That's longer than entire stories that I've written, and it's not even a complete synopsis. From what I can tell, the synopsis covers about two thirds of The Ferret, Magnificent, which is the first story out of a proposed four. The Ferret is an Immortal alien supervillain who is trying to take over the galaxy, but isn't doing a very good job of it. The conspiracy, of course, is far deeper than anyone can imagine.
Time to save the universe.
Ultimately, it's one of those stories that be super fun, or super terrible, and it all depends on the skill of the writer. Fanfic has probably helped in that regard, even if at this point, it's become so addictive that I'm having difficulty tearing myself away. Considering recent changes, I think that it's about time to at the very least, slow down.
The netbook still won't boot up, but at this point, I've written that segment of Wake off as a loss. I do remember what happened in it, so it's not a super big deal, but I still always feel a pang of sadness when I lose something, because even if the story itself didn't work, there will always be sentences, or words, or thoughts that just snapped into place, and now they're gone. Tears in the rain, dust in the wind, whatever.
Time to start again.
The world was a shapeless, grey blob.
ETA: Found it! It was on the netbook! Transfer imminent! Another redundant exclamation mark!
I've been ignoring Wake for a while, mainly because I'd decided to do Requiem for my Nano experiment (which failed miserably, but that's another story) but I've been on a bit of a "spaceships are fucking awesome" kick lately, so I wanted to write a bit for Wake.
Can't find it.
Really, when it comes down to it, I'm the least organised person in the universe. I'd take a photo of my desk - complete with books piled everywhere, a netbook, a laptop and a desktop computer, two external harddrives, a tangle of wires, and a bunch of other things that really should have been thrown out or put away a long time ago. The netbook's presence is justifiable for reasons that I'll get to, but anyway...
I try to keep my files a little neater. There are folders for Fan Fiction and regular Fiction, folders for works in progress, folders for different fandoms, etc. It's actually easier for Fan Fiction, because I usually don't end up writing seventeen different versions of the same story because it's not working for how I'm feeling that day (Seriously - The Lost Prophecies of Smiley the Frogman is both my greatest love, and my greatest nightmare, but I'll get to that later too).
So there are 3 different versions of Wake. One that starts in first person, and then jumps to third person with a character name that I changed. One that actually uses a character that got moved to Requiem (two characters got moved to Requiem, actually, but I was planning on fixing one of those tonight and now I can't). The third one is probably closest to what I was looking for, but it's super-short, and was rewritten again anyway.
The fourth version - the one I want - is nowhere to be found. I scoured the harddrive, and the pendrive (where all the writing lives), I booted the desktop up to check that too, and I brought out the netbook. Wherein begins the problem.
The netbook is fried.
Has been for a few weeks - I took it back to the store where I got it, and they said "try and get some of your data off it, and then bring it back, because we are going to wipe that sucker like it's yesterday's jam." And anyway, to cut a long story short, I got off some stuff, and then the city flooded, so getting it back to the store was a bit of a problem. Still haven't been back. Should probably do that. Kinda glad I didn't, though, because if I lose this file...
Well, it's not a super big loss.
It's, I think, a couple of thousand words max, and I didn't really like it anyway. Wake is a fun little story about torture and horrifying shit, and waking up in the future with no arm, and it wasn't quite doing what it was supposed to do, so I was going to work on it tonight, because if there's something more fun than writing a badass vampire-sorcerer who's pissed off, it's writing a badass cyborg who's pissed off (I kinda sense a theme here).
Still trying to get access to the netbook, but no dice.
The important thing, though, is that I went through my original fic folder (not including the latest addition, just in its infancy, about a guy that gets hit by an exploding tank and turns into a superhero. Powerful stuff). It happens to all of us, I think (I hope) - you get bored one night, and start going through old stuff, concussed by the sledgehammer of nostalgia, and in some cases, the horror of "did I really used to write like that?" It happens with photos, too, only much less horrific.
Anyway, I digress.
As mentioned before, The Lost Prophecies of Smiley the Frogman is my greatest love, and my greatest nightmare. It's the story I've been working on for the last six years, and it's the story I'll be working on for the next twenty. It's the story that I'm never really happy with, and yet the core plot remains the same. In my fic folder, there are twenty-five word documents alone relating to this story, plus a couple of photoshops. Some of the files are copies of each other in a different file format (I have no idea why some of these are in .rtf) but most of them are rewritten versions of the same story.
At it's heart, The Lost Prophecies of Smiley the Frogman is a comedy. It's the kind of story that, if it's written the wrong way, it turns it the world's biggest trainwreck. Epic sci-fi can be great stuff, written seriously, but I don't know if I'd call this one science fiction. It's the stuff born of teenage imagination, like axe-wielding ninjas who ride dinosaurs. Actually, I don't think the story has any of those. What it does have is aliens, mutants, gods, immortals, superheroes, ghosts, vampires, werewolves and spaceship captains. What is has is love, betrayal, amnesia, war, death and muffins.
One of the files is a synopsis. It's been a long time since I've used a synopsis, because I tend to ignore them completely and just do whatever my brain wants to do, which is why I think this story has so many files. Even it needs rewriting, because some of the concepts, even for comedy story, are, to be completely honest, utter shit. Stuff that crosses the line from kinda weird into completely stupid. But that's not the important thing. The important thing is, the synopsis is 17,000 words long. That's longer than entire stories that I've written, and it's not even a complete synopsis. From what I can tell, the synopsis covers about two thirds of The Ferret, Magnificent, which is the first story out of a proposed four. The Ferret is an Immortal alien supervillain who is trying to take over the galaxy, but isn't doing a very good job of it. The conspiracy, of course, is far deeper than anyone can imagine.
Time to save the universe.
Ultimately, it's one of those stories that be super fun, or super terrible, and it all depends on the skill of the writer. Fanfic has probably helped in that regard, even if at this point, it's become so addictive that I'm having difficulty tearing myself away. Considering recent changes, I think that it's about time to at the very least, slow down.
The netbook still won't boot up, but at this point, I've written that segment of Wake off as a loss. I do remember what happened in it, so it's not a super big deal, but I still always feel a pang of sadness when I lose something, because even if the story itself didn't work, there will always be sentences, or words, or thoughts that just snapped into place, and now they're gone. Tears in the rain, dust in the wind, whatever.
Time to start again.
The world was a shapeless, grey blob.
ETA: Found it! It was on the netbook! Transfer imminent! Another redundant exclamation mark!