Taking a break from writing the fifth chapter of my new book, I decided it would be best to clean up my computer's hard drive and back up my old documents. My process has been to just copy and past my entire documents to my external hard drive, but today I decided to do it differently. As my computer is starting to slowly die, even opening a word processing program becomes a strain on its memory. So I decided that I would transfer some of the old folders and simply delete them off of my computer entirely. That would make future backups much simpler.
So I began to do so, noting which of the file folders were larger with very limited success and discovering a large amount of music I can no longer listen to because the stupid licenses were expired three computers ago. And of course, being a writer, I discovered a large amounts of old projects. Some of these stories dated back to over decade ago and I amused myself by reading a few of them. And wouldn't you know it, I've gotten a lot better over the years.
Let me pick out a few for you as a couple of examples. The earliest story I chose was title "Don't Read (Until You Are Ready)". As far as I can tell, I'm not sure anyone would be ready for the atrocity in store for them, but I digress. The story, I think, is about a group of children who were genetically modified at birth so that they could form a resistance to... something. I'm guessing a force of pure evil, but I'm only guessing at the moment. Its a sci-fi action story, if you wish to be polite, and it is very unintentionally hilarious. Back then, I thought I was writing the greatest novel ever. You may give me credit, I was twelve years old.
The next story I scanned was a story called 'Raks and the Nightstalker'. For those of you who know, Raks is one of my characters whose name I use often. Early in his time, Raks was an immortal dark sorcerer who's powers made Superman look like a wimp. This story, as the first line of text describes, is "Raks' first adventure after he escaped from Hell'. In a revised edition I discovered, this line was changed to 'Raks' first story after he escaped from The Dark Land'. However, I failed to revise the name Satan, so there was very little point. The story describes the warlock as he is sucked into the first battle with his arch nemesis, the Nightstalker and meets his love interest, Miranda. It honestly isn't as exciting as it sounds. The story itself is dialogued based. Literally. Every single line and paragraph, with very rare exceptions, is talking. And I thought my first book was bad. The story was supposed to be an epic, spanning thousands of years of conflict, love, loss, betrayal and so on and so forth. Long story short, I wrote it in my head, learned from it, forgot most of it then moved on. Next story.
The next story skips about six years. I use openoffice, because Microsoft Word is a pain in the ass. Though I did use it to write two chapters of my next book and found it tolerable once I got the hang of it. Moving on. One of the stories I recognized the name, but openoffice insisted it was corrupted. So I opened it with MS Word. I couldn't even copy and paste it out, that's how hard ass MS Word without a key is, but I was at least able to read it. The story was called, the Legend. About... three years ago, I planned another space opera like story. It was going to center around Raks, a powerful mage whose magic was based on technology and his rise and fall from power. I started to write down concepts not only of the story but of the universe and from that came the Legend. The Legend takes place in a brothel on an entertainment planet and follows Loch, a boy hired as a gopher for the 'entertainers' who work there. I never got much into the story, back then I never ever finished a project, but what I wrote down still makes me think. The main bits I wrote down was a legend that explained human conflict and sexuality and my own feelings about love and romance. Or at least back then. Some of what I wrote I feel conflicted about now, but I understood where it was coming from. Again, like more of my concepts if you were to sit down and read them, it is mostly dialogue, question and answer sort of thing. But a more interesting read than Nightstalker.
Looking back on all that I've written, what I can remember and what I have reread, I feel more confident about my writers journey. And as I look forward to publishing my antthology and completing my second book, I wonder if I myself will look back in twelve years back at what I have written at this time. Perhaps I will even look back at this blog. I wonder what I will think then.
The work waits and I must continue to write my next masterpiece. Or maybe my unintentional hilarity in twelve years. I'll catch up with you all soon.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
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