Tuesday 27 March 2012

Return to the Journey

All righty, then! I've sidetracked long enough! It's time to return to my little story. It's getting close to done so why don't I just move along. Now let's see. Where was I? Ah, yes. The completion of the first draft. Right.

So, let's see. I'd finished the first draft; it was all written out in pen. Hundreds of dog-eared pages covered in enough ink to paint a horse. Or two.

It was approaching Christmas. It was a cold, soggy Christmas, as I recall. Snow up the wazoo. That's uncomfortable. My lovely Cori and I were travelling, that year, to visit family. In fact some very special people, Cori's mother and father, drove from Washington DC to meet us in Toronto.

As a side note, our little girl was one that year. Travelling with a one year old child is the height of hilarity (can you see the sarcasm oozing out of your screen?) but we managed.

The moment we left our house, I started getting jittery. My manuscript was sitting in there, all alone, with no one to take care of it. But my lovely Cori was adamant: no thinking about it! It was just a few days, but it really affected me. Probably too much; I probably should have made an appointment with a psychiatrist.

In Toronto, my in-laws (wonderful people!) met us at the hotel where we would all spend the night. Nice place: not too fancy-schmancy but certainly not a run-down cockroach farm either. In their room, they presented us with some early Christmas presents.

And there it was: my shiny new laptop. To be honest, it's a netbook, a little guy that's just perfect for toting around everywhere I go. I was, of course, elated. Ecstatic. Beside myself! (What a silly expression...) At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to start writing. I still have it. I've written both books, the majority of my third book, and this blog on this netbook.

And that's when it came home. Hundreds of hand written pages. Hundreds of them. I had no scanner. Even if I did, my handwriting had been so bad that any character recognition software would have either laughed at me, or had a psychotic meltdown. Chances are, it would have tried to murder me in my sleep. With a pen of course.

The rest of the trip was very nice, I suppose. But I admit I was quite preoccupied. I wanted to get back to the book. At the same time, the thought of painstakingly transferring it all to the digital world caused a certain trepidation...

Aw jeez, who am I kidding? It gave me nightmares!

But more on that later. I have a book to try to finish at some point in the near future.

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