I remember back in the days I wrote on a manual typewriter, I'd turn in a story and the editor would want some changes and he'd ask if I could have the story back in two weeks. Shoot, nowdays they want the re-write back overnight. I used to write big stories when I first started--10,000 words or more. At 250 words to the page, double spaced, that's something like 40 pages. When I finished a story just to type it up in a suitable form to send to the publisher would take me two or three days of typing. And even on a good day the story would be filled with dozens and dozens of crossouts and inserts and handwritten changes.
Even so, in the early days students were still suspicous of computers. I remember once addressing a journalism class at UC Berkeley. I was enthusing about computers and a sceptical student asked if I ever lost all my work. "Once," I said. "But I wrote it again in 30 minutes and it was better."
I can't believe some of these Luddites. As if the possibility that you might lose a story was reason enough to avoid computers altogether. Even before computers I've lost stories in the mail. I've lost stories because the dog ate them. I've lost stories because I accidentally threw them away with the trash. I know I'm never going to throw my computer away accidentally. As for losing stories, occasionally that happens. But a few precautions make that possibility exceedingly rare. Currently I'm working on a long non-fiction story. The computer is set to back it up on the main hard drive every few minutes. Then every hour or so I back it up on the secondary hard drive and also on a re-writeable CD-ROM. It's hard to imagine I could lose all three, no matter what happens.
Even so, in the early days students were still suspicous of computers. I remember once addressing a journalism class at UC Berkeley. I was enthusing about computers and a sceptical student asked if I ever lost all my work. "Once," I said. "But I wrote it again in 30 minutes and it was better."
I can't believe some of these Luddites. As if the possibility that you might lose a story was reason enough to avoid computers altogether. Even before computers I've lost stories in the mail. I've lost stories because the dog ate them. I've lost stories because I accidentally threw them away with the trash. I know I'm never going to throw my computer away accidentally. As for losing stories, occasionally that happens. But a few precautions make that possibility exceedingly rare. Currently I'm working on a long non-fiction story. The computer is set to back it up on the main hard drive every few minutes. Then every hour or so I back it up on the secondary hard drive and also on a re-writeable CD-ROM. It's hard to imagine I could lose all three, no matter what happens.
