Finding new treasures.

So, I have a really interesting way of storing my written work in progress.

I email it to myself and keep it there.

There’s several reasons why I do this. Most of them have to do with the fact I’m a computer tech by day and know a lot about computers. In short, they break easy, are easy to steal and it’s hard for anti virus companies to stay ahead of all the new virus’ out there. A lot can go wrong.

In addition to all these reasons, I can also access my email from any computer. If for some reason I don’t have my laptop and am on my best friends, I just log onto my email and there’s my work.

Easy Easy Easy.

But this last week, I was going through my email, cleaning out very old stuff when I found an alternate ending for my first book that I wrote back in December of 2014.

It’s four chapters long and at the time, I didn’t realize I was writing myself into a plot hole. A few months later, I found the error and had to do a large rewrite. I saved about 1.6 of the four chapters and reworked them into the current ending.

The biggest change is almost all of the characters are in the ending scene. I realized one should not be there and why. I then had to completely edit her out, and several things were changed earlier of why she wasn’t in the scene.

But I really enjoyed finding these chapters and being able to read them again. I’d forgotten all about them, until I found that one email to myself.

The most eye opening thing about it was how much my style has changed. I’m in no way trying to brag, but I can see improvement. My writing was a lot clunkier, more awkward, a lot more fragments and passive voice. Also, while my grammar wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t great either.

But to be fair, this was my first book. I started writing it in October. I don’t write in chronological order, and like getting the end out of the way, so the ending was one of the first things I wrote. So it was very early writing for me!

Personally, I’m really glad I work like this. Because now I can go back and see how my work has progressed.

For example, during my second book, I wrote about 20% in a month and a half and then had to take two months off writing for work (It was miserable, but I was extremely busy with a project, it had to be done.) When I got back to the novel, the words practically flowed out of my fingers. I finished the other 80% is a little under three months.

When I look at my email, I can see where I emailed myself every two-three weeks and see how much I was writing. Even now, I’m still amazed at what I got done.

And all because I wanted to keep an copy in case my laptop broke or it was destroyed by a virus.

It makes me wonder if famous author’s ever read their books from many years ago and wish they could make changes or update things.  Or even just cringe because they think the quality of their work then was bad.

Who knows.

Anyway, hope everyone is having a good weekend =)

~Ames