I came across an old ZIP drive that had 5 novels I wrote back in the 80's (I shopped them around then, but no takers), and admit that I'm tempted to revisit them. They were written either in VI, or Wordstar, or Wordperfect, IF I were to yield to temptation I would take the zip disk to a local computer repair / guru in the area and see if he could converted into MS Word. The issue is that those books were written 35 years ago, and I'm not that person anymore and have evolved; I remember their plots, and so believe it would be best to just start with a clean slate and rewrite everything.
Obviously a really good point. The ZIP drives were probably where the full scans were hanging out. I printed everything out on the off chance that the electronic media let me down. Of course, it did. The program they were written in went out of use. Even the ZIP drives are obsolete I guess. I threw that all in the trash knowing that my old work was on it. Instead, I have boxes of printed paper. But somehow I did get some novels on a scan. Still missing the one I wanted most-- but that's okay if it never happens. I guess.
I think I am doing this more because shaping up a novel that has flaws is an exercise that will make me a better writer and editor-- and we all need that sort of thing. These were written in about 2000-2001 (so not as old). The one I am having issues with was written in Works.
I wrote about 13 novels between 1996 (or so) and about 2005. Of those, only 4 are full enough not to count as fragments-- running in about the 70,000-word range as an unfinished novel (with more expansion room to make it to about 80 or 90K. I look at the writing and it is not as though I was "bad" back then, and "better" now. I was more "ornate" then, and "undisciplined, but the writing is good, in fact, I want to regress a bit after seeing it. I have been taking Master's degrees where I am expected/ was taught to be more succinct, and get brief in the John Williams mode. This is really why I thought now would be a good time to revisit the old novels-- because I am a better organizer, not because I am a better (or worse) writer. (Actually l like the areas that go totally "Salman Rushdie" on me.
In an update, I got a copy of Scrivener yesterday. I have windows but got the deal where I got 25% discount and when Scrivener-3 comes out I can upgrade for free. I spent all yesterday downloading the novels which were saved to a big Seagate external drive, They were written in Word, so they were no problem to download. Let me tell you, I love Scrivener after only one night of use. I was a bit worried because certain people have said it is too difficult to learn. I got most things right away except the first step which is a little odd. I uploaded what I had of 2 longer page length novels, and one that was more fragmentary, as well as one I just started. One of those is set in the '60s-- the one I was looking at last night was set among people who lived their childhoods in the 1960s (the initiating incident happened in about 1974)-- so it is not "present-day" the main characters are in their 30s.
I totally love setting novels in eras that did not have internet, computers, or smartphones. Is this a thing? I mean where the characters have to go to the library to do research? (No one has noticed no smartphones in Harry Potter and yet he gets away with it. Smartphones really ruin a mystery story.
So I read some of it last night. I thought it needed more bad words, and the "artifacts from scanning are worse in some parts than others-- indicating that I spent several hours with it before. I actually can say I did not "dislike it." I never like my own writing. But I can tell when something is wrong.
One thing I decided last night was that what I wrote was on the verge of "horror" but still a who-done-it. This was really subtle horror using the Onryō (vengeful ghost). But also, it takes an approach where the remembered life in 1974 is written in such a way as it is contemporary with the time in which the story is set. And, to top it off, the 1974 people who are still living in their 30's are the ghosts. -- It came from a conversation I had with someone in a parking lot in 1996 where I wondered out loud if there could be living ghosts. Oh well-- totally unpublishable.
The rules it follows are not in keeping with the typical ghost story. The only writer I truly got into for a while that I can say reflects this is Clive Barker.
Horror stories these days have more blood and gore, so in this way, it is out of touch-- the ghosts are more "literary." But it is something I can play around with.
Oh, and speaking of Salman Rushdi, this is why, just of late, I have been thinking about tossing the genre, (mystery/horror/ghost) and going full out magical realism-- literary novel. Will study this direction.