I bought my first computer when the first Amstrads came out and before that I had a Brother electric typewriter which had a little chip which worked as a mini word-processor, but it’s memory was little more than what I would write today as a handful of tweets! I never could have imagined that I would have the type of phone I have now which is a mini-computer all in itself on which I can write, research, read, communicate, navigate… oh and telephone people!
I now write on the computer all the time; partly my handwriting is so illegible that even I can’t always read what I have written, also it is just so convenient for revising, reworking, reordering, checking, searching for particular parts of the text… oh a million things! So when, last night, at a crucial point in the latest story I’m writing, the computer suddenly decided to turn itself off and then make a half-hearted effort to turn itself on again, it was a little irritating to say the least.
I took a calm and patient approach to the situation, and waited for the start screen to come up; I waited… and waited… and the screen took on a greyish shimmering hue… And after a while I turned it off with the off switch…and after a suitable pause for it to come to its senses, I turned it back on again… A rather long series of frustrating things happened, until when it seemed settled I turned it off correctly, bidding it good night, and went to bed. it seems fine today…
I wondered briefly whether I should return to writing on paper as I did when I was young, to try to overcome my bad handwriting and be creative in a more traditional way… but if I did that, if I wrote my 100,000+ words by hand, I would have to at some point type them up either as a printed manuscript, or as a document filed on the computer. If it was a printed manuscript I could send it to a publisher (as I have done dozens and dozens of times before) but otherwise it would just sit there in a folder or in a drawer, unread. If I typed it up on a computer I could send it electronically (and more cheaply) to a publisher or publish it on Kindle as I have with my other novels… in which case, what would have been the point of writing it by hand to begin with? Double the work!!
When technology goes wrong as it did for me in a very minor way last night, it can be frustrating and annoying but things can go wrong with a handwritten or typed physical manuscript too. I came across these disastrous episodes for authors who went on to be successful and famous:
- TE Lawrence: Seven Pillars of Wisdom: he left the manuscript in the cafe at Reading station.
- Jilly Cooper: Riders: she left the only copy of the manuscript on a London bus.
- VS Naipaul’s back-catalogue: he put his manuscripts into storage in a London warehouse and they were incinerated.
- James Michener: he misplaced the manuscript an epic novel about Mexico but it did turn up 30 years later
- Dylan Thomas: Under Milk Wood: he lost the manuscript three times, in London, America, and London again.
- Malcolm Lowry: Ultramarine: he had the manuscript stolen from his publisher’s car.
- JM Falkner’s fourth novel: he Falkner lost the manuscript on the train between Durham and Newcastle.
- Ernest Hemingway’s early stories: his wife, Hadley lost the manuscript on a train in Switzerland.
- Thomas Carlyle: The French Revolution: he lent the manuscript to his friend John Stuart Mill whose maid accidentally burnt it.
- Robert Ludlum’s first novel: lost the manuscript after a long drinking session while on leave in San Francisco.
You can read more about these ghastly nightmares here:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/1000-novels-lost-manuscripts
Lois Elsden 
What if the computer on the airplane you were flying to Iceland on went for a crap? Now that’s a real problem because most pilots have forgotten how to fly without them.
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That’s true! Which is quite worrying… perhaps I should take a boat to Iceland instead! 😉
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