My first book was a test of my patience with technology. I started out writing it in 1994 on a Tandy HX1000, which had 256 mb of memory. Each time I sat down to write, I had to pull out a floppy disc, put it into the computer, and then make sure to save when I was done. According to the computer, I was writing in a document file. What I wasn't told is that the document file was only ever going to be able to be opened by a Tandy HX1000 computer.
I didn't know that last point until the Tandy suddenly made an odd noise, a puff of smoke came out of the back, and the computer shut down, never to start again.
A friend, who had just purchased a new computer, had a Compaq that he'd retired in his clo.set. There was nothing technically WRONG with the Compaq, he had just opted to go for bigger, better, faster, I was told. Once again, it was what I WASN'T told that came back to bite me in the tush.....
.
While I love my friend dearly, he's a graduate of M.I.T, and has his own way of doing things. For instance, he doesn't do games on computers, so he had removed some programs that he thought only had to do with gaming. Unfortunately, there are some programs that are tied together, so when he removed the games from his computer to save memory space, there were a couple of programs that were affected - and since I couldn't recover the document file from the floppy disc I'd been using with the Tandy, I had to start writing "Night of the Tiger" all over again. Because of my experience with the Tandy, I not only saved my work on the computer itself, but I was saving to a floppy disc.
I didn't know about Rich Text Format, so I was still saving as a doc file. Stupid human. The Universe laughs at such foolishness!
The Compaq's issue with the missing files eventually became my issue, as the programs started to not work properly. Instead of saving my documents as words, my story started to have odd characters thrown in, like long sections of alien symbols instead of the words I had typed. I hadn't been saving to a floppy disc or a cd, so by the time I thought about that, the files I saved were corrupted....
My husband came to the rescue by buying me an HP desktop computer base. Unfotunately, the problems with the Compaq programs meant that I had to start from scratch again on my story. I had also managed to injure myself, so I was starting this process again at a time that I was on heavy duty pain medications.
I still read through the first book and get frustrated at the computer programs that caused so many issues, especially since some of the finer writing on the story got "eaten" by computer programs....
By the time I started work on "The Tiger's Cub", I had learned a lot about computers and how to save files so that they can be transferred from one computer to another without loss of any part of the work. My work is now saved in both a document file and a rich text format, allowing it to be transferred easily between computers. The new "learning curve" for the second book involved working with models and making ones own cover for a book when the publisher doesn't have an art director to make the cover for me. The fact that the cover was fouled when it got to the publisher frustrated me - and still does when I look at some of the covers online that involve a heavy black streak in my model's hair that wasn't there on the art piece the publisher finally agreed to use.
So, I launch into book three with all this education in place. I'm saving the files religiously, both on the computer and on a thumb drive, since floppy discs are technology of the past. I have a cover whose art work has already started to get rave reviews. I have the book formatted to the correct size for me to be able to see what it will look right after it's printed. I'm working very hard to get it to look just the way I wish for it to before it gets loaded to the printer's web site for the first "test print"....
And each time I open the file I've been so religiously saving, the formatting has somehow changed again so that I have to start again each time.....
I now work with technical savvy people. I can ask what's going on and how to stop it from happening, but I don't like what I'm hearing....
It seems that this time, the technical difficulty is coming from the fact that I still have Microsoft Works, which is formatted to work with Windows XP, on my laptop. Although it was supposed to continue to work with Windows 7 when I bought my Dell laptop, it's had to be uninstalled and reinstalled a couple of times over the years to keep it working properly. The problem is that Microsoft no longer supports this program, and therefore, more recent updates to the Windows 7 operating system means that, even if I uninstall and reinstall again, there won't be any updates coming in to correct the issues it seems to currently be having.
*giving Bill Gates the evil eye, as I've already had to buy all kinds of "extras" over the past year to compensate for Microsoft deciding to no longer support Windows XP or any of the related programs*
Before we get back to a situation in which I have to start over on a story that is just one month from release, I'm looking at the current programs used for editing the story. Do I choose Microsoft's Office 365, which has a yearly fee attached? Do I go with Microsoft Publisher instead, even though I know nothing about it? Do I get the 2013 Works program that was made to work better with Windows 7 and may be just enough to keep me going for a couple more years, when the Dell laptop will probably need to be replaced because parts are already starting to wear out?
Sounds like a job for the Techno-geeks at Staples, who are probably ready to string me up somewhere in the back room for asking them so many questions already.
Addendum October 21: Less of a problem than I anticipated, considering past experience. It's a simple matter. New hard drive. Extra gigs of memory. It will be here on Monday. Meantime, I've installed the needed programs in the desktop and am continuing on. I was also told that my six year old laptop should have done this to me three years ago. I feel better now.
I kept it alive longer than it should have lived. It was meant to die. *smile*
I didn't know that last point until the Tandy suddenly made an odd noise, a puff of smoke came out of the back, and the computer shut down, never to start again.
A friend, who had just purchased a new computer, had a Compaq that he'd retired in his clo.set. There was nothing technically WRONG with the Compaq, he had just opted to go for bigger, better, faster, I was told. Once again, it was what I WASN'T told that came back to bite me in the tush.....
.
While I love my friend dearly, he's a graduate of M.I.T, and has his own way of doing things. For instance, he doesn't do games on computers, so he had removed some programs that he thought only had to do with gaming. Unfortunately, there are some programs that are tied together, so when he removed the games from his computer to save memory space, there were a couple of programs that were affected - and since I couldn't recover the document file from the floppy disc I'd been using with the Tandy, I had to start writing "Night of the Tiger" all over again. Because of my experience with the Tandy, I not only saved my work on the computer itself, but I was saving to a floppy disc.
I didn't know about Rich Text Format, so I was still saving as a doc file. Stupid human. The Universe laughs at such foolishness!
The Compaq's issue with the missing files eventually became my issue, as the programs started to not work properly. Instead of saving my documents as words, my story started to have odd characters thrown in, like long sections of alien symbols instead of the words I had typed. I hadn't been saving to a floppy disc or a cd, so by the time I thought about that, the files I saved were corrupted....
My husband came to the rescue by buying me an HP desktop computer base. Unfotunately, the problems with the Compaq programs meant that I had to start from scratch again on my story. I had also managed to injure myself, so I was starting this process again at a time that I was on heavy duty pain medications.
I still read through the first book and get frustrated at the computer programs that caused so many issues, especially since some of the finer writing on the story got "eaten" by computer programs....
By the time I started work on "The Tiger's Cub", I had learned a lot about computers and how to save files so that they can be transferred from one computer to another without loss of any part of the work. My work is now saved in both a document file and a rich text format, allowing it to be transferred easily between computers. The new "learning curve" for the second book involved working with models and making ones own cover for a book when the publisher doesn't have an art director to make the cover for me. The fact that the cover was fouled when it got to the publisher frustrated me - and still does when I look at some of the covers online that involve a heavy black streak in my model's hair that wasn't there on the art piece the publisher finally agreed to use.
So, I launch into book three with all this education in place. I'm saving the files religiously, both on the computer and on a thumb drive, since floppy discs are technology of the past. I have a cover whose art work has already started to get rave reviews. I have the book formatted to the correct size for me to be able to see what it will look right after it's printed. I'm working very hard to get it to look just the way I wish for it to before it gets loaded to the printer's web site for the first "test print"....
And each time I open the file I've been so religiously saving, the formatting has somehow changed again so that I have to start again each time.....
I now work with technical savvy people. I can ask what's going on and how to stop it from happening, but I don't like what I'm hearing....
It seems that this time, the technical difficulty is coming from the fact that I still have Microsoft Works, which is formatted to work with Windows XP, on my laptop. Although it was supposed to continue to work with Windows 7 when I bought my Dell laptop, it's had to be uninstalled and reinstalled a couple of times over the years to keep it working properly. The problem is that Microsoft no longer supports this program, and therefore, more recent updates to the Windows 7 operating system means that, even if I uninstall and reinstall again, there won't be any updates coming in to correct the issues it seems to currently be having.
*giving Bill Gates the evil eye, as I've already had to buy all kinds of "extras" over the past year to compensate for Microsoft deciding to no longer support Windows XP or any of the related programs*
Before we get back to a situation in which I have to start over on a story that is just one month from release, I'm looking at the current programs used for editing the story. Do I choose Microsoft's Office 365, which has a yearly fee attached? Do I go with Microsoft Publisher instead, even though I know nothing about it? Do I get the 2013 Works program that was made to work better with Windows 7 and may be just enough to keep me going for a couple more years, when the Dell laptop will probably need to be replaced because parts are already starting to wear out?
Sounds like a job for the Techno-geeks at Staples, who are probably ready to string me up somewhere in the back room for asking them so many questions already.
Addendum October 21: Less of a problem than I anticipated, considering past experience. It's a simple matter. New hard drive. Extra gigs of memory. It will be here on Monday. Meantime, I've installed the needed programs in the desktop and am continuing on. I was also told that my six year old laptop should have done this to me three years ago. I feel better now.
I kept it alive longer than it should have lived. It was meant to die. *smile*
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