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musings, thoughts, and writings of Barbara W. Klaser


April 13, 2007

Paper to digital

Has it been more than a week already since I posted? I lost track of time during my panic of the past few days. The other night, after a glitch occurred when I ran my backup program, I thought I’d lost all my files for my current book in progress. Panic ensued, while I scrambled to find and undelete the files. I spent almost 24 hours straight on that, with little sleep, piecing together fragmented files, hoping I still had a complete book there. Finally I came across the directory on the backup computer where my backup program had stored a complete second archive of everything — perfectly intact and up to date, including every last minute of my work on the book.

All that panic because I was too dumb to know my backup program stored an archive of deleted files, and because I had allowed too much other garbage to backlog on my hard drive. (The glitch occurred when that particular hard drive filled up.)

I could sit here and ask why me, or rather ask why I do this to myself, but I’m too busy getting back to normal and on with work. Still, it seems that I go through this sort of panic on a regular basis. It happened two years ago when my old laptop gave out and I lost work that I hadn’t yet backed up. This time it resulted from the backup process itself.

Once I’m finished with this book and it’s off getting a look by some agents, I plan to spend a few weeks getting my life in better order, including both paper and digital files, to prevent future panic episodes.

But one thing I noticed during all of this was that I don’t tend to print out what I’ve written as often as I used to. In spite of what might’ve been lost, overall I consider that a good thing, a good sign that I’m making my personal transition from paper to a digital world.

I admit to some affection for the paper world. It’s what I grew up with, and where I found my love of books and the written word. There is still something sensual to me about the feeling of pen and paper or a book in my hands. I like the shape of the book, the weight of it, the toothy or smooth texture of paper, even the smell of ink, paper, and binding materials. I still recall with nostalgia the particular smell of the book I was handed in third or fourth grade when we studied the culture and geography of Japan. Ever since, I’ve looked for similar qualities each time I open a new book. All these things make letting go of the paper world a clingy process.

At the same time, I love trees. Because of that, I’ve always been troubled that my chosen form of expression — writing — has a history of felling so many trees. So when I went through my computer files and some paper files over the past few days, I was pleased to realize that I recently have less tendency to print as I write. I used to feel a need to print out what I’d written more frequently, to edit or proofread on paper rather than onscreen, or just to get a sense of what the printed story would look like.

Maybe it’s so many years of writing on a computer that’s changed this. Maybe it’s the laptop’s portability and reduced glare being easier on my eyes. Maybe it’s no longer having a job that requires me to stare at a screen all day and then do the same all my evenings and weekends for my fiction writing.

Maybe it’s blogging. The immediacy of blogging tends to encourage me to edit onscreen. My blog is even set up now so I can view what I write in two or three different fonts before I post it, which I think aids the onscreen editing and proofreading process.

Maybe it’s a combination of all those factors. It’s interesting to note that more publishing venues have opened up to electronic submissions just since the CRT monitor has begun to vanish. Hopefully the less glaring monitors that are replacing them will be much easier on all our eyes, and continue to save more trees.

I still write a good half of my personal journal pages by hand, and I still use handwriting to jump-start or unblock my writing process. This blog post is in fact a segue from my morning pages. But my journal pages don’t get reproduced, except by typing them into a digital format, and they’re unlikely ever to be published in book form. The paper is eventually recycled if they do become digital, so I’m not as concerned about my journal pages killing trees. At least that’s what I like to tell myself.

Now if we can get the ebook technology to the point where fewer paper books have to be printed, at least for popular fiction, then we’ll have made real progress in taking publishing from deforestation for profit to a more pure form of edification, expression, and entertainment. Of course there will always be uses for paper. I can’t think of a better way to keep certain legal documents or accounting records, right now, though that’s not a world I work or have much expertise in. There are also some types of books that just work better, for now, on paper. One that comes to mind is the coffee table variety, with color plates of artwork or photography. But the less trees cut down for paper and books, the better.

Even if what this Guardian Unlimited article says is true, that planting more trees in temperate latitudes won’t help assuage global warming, it also states that destroying more trees isn’t the answer, that the greater need, and indeed our motivation for attempting to slow global warming, is to preserve ecosystems, including but certainly not limited to our own.

Perhaps my panic over my files had some value. It got me not only to change what I file away on my computer and how I back it up, but also to take a hard look at how I use paper, to keep heading along the road I’ve started down, of conserving wherever it’s reasonable, and wherever I can.

— Barbara @ 2:16 pm PST, 04/13/07

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7 Comments

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  1. 1.

    Books have attractive physical aspects but the most important part of a book (discounting picture books) is its words and words work just as well in their incorporeal electronic form. In the cases of some of the novels Mary and I have written, we never saw a single word except on-screen, until the galleys arrived…a fact that horrified our editor. There may be some advantage, when it comes to accurately assessing what you’ve done, to seeing your writing in a physical format. I don’t think so, but it’s arguable.

    You definitely had a frightening computer experience. I love computers when they work. When they don’t…well, it can be a nightmare for us non-geeks. I do know there is no way I could write and rewrite and tinker the way I do if I had to use a typewriter and white-out and carbons and such like in the old days. Maybe I would’ve tried harder to get it right the first time. I think I still do, actually. Computers have been an invaluable aid to me.

    Comment by Eric Mayer — April 13, 2007 @ 6:04 pm

  2. 2.

    I’ve found the best investment that I have ever made was the purchase of an external hard drive to back up my computer…and then using it, too…

    Comment by violetismycolor — April 15, 2007 @ 12:00 pm

  3. 3.

    My hard drive crashed a week or two ago. I thought I lost everything, so I know your panic. As it turned out, they were able to transfer the data, intact, and throw it on a new drive. Gratitude is my middle name.

    But your tender insight into the use of trees is what I really loved about this. I’m not very ‘centered’ on ecology, even though I believe we should do everything possible, and vote accordingly. I just haven’t been responsible about taking PERSONAL responsibility (thinking I don’t make a difference).
    Thanks. I’ll take another look.

    Comment by Beverly Jackson — April 15, 2007 @ 2:40 pm

  4. 4.

    Wow, I almost had a heart attack for you. Think about a Usb/tongue drive. Easy and very cheap right now. You can take your book to wherever you are too! Just in case you get whisked along to some exotic location where there is a computer.

    Comment by Susan — April 19, 2007 @ 5:36 am

  5. 5.

    I’m so glad you got your files back. What a distressing happening.

    They say there are only 2 kinds of computer people - those who have lost data, and those who will.

    Cas

    Comment by cassie-b — April 20, 2007 @ 7:59 am

  6. 6.

    Hie thee to a store and get a 1 gig thumb drive. It plugs directly into USB port and it will save your (ahem!) if you back up to it regularly. And it’s portable-can hang around your neck like an exceptionally ugly lavaliere/pendant.

    I know that stomach-knotting, knee-weakening, mouth-drying panic. I’m so glad it was all for naught and your stuff was there, safe and sound. May all your evil events turn out so well.

    Comment by Sarah — April 22, 2007 @ 4:14 pm

  7. 7.

    For peace of mind and instead of printing to paper, and in addition to your current backup routine, consider writing a CDr at the end of each complete manuscript revision, then putting that CD in your filing system.

    It also seems it’s past time for a larger backup-computer harddrive.

    I wonder what the security implications are for moving the manuscript around on a USB flash drive, potentially to an Internet-connected machine. Something to think about given all the warrantless searches reportedly being conducted.

    Comment by Ken — April 23, 2007 @ 1:05 pm

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