Once upon a time, I wrote a novel.
My computer ate it. It wasn't a great novel, society will continue unaffected by its not being published, but it was mine, and now it is lost. Apart from often angry rants and comments on social media, and this blog, I haven't written anything else since.
It also wasn't a complete novel. I guess technically I've written part of two novels, but the other one I wrote bits of in fits and starts, and I think I've always mentally written it off as never going to be completed. It was a childish fantasy, written only to be the bad first novel full of cliché that I could discard and never have to embarrass myself by having to show to anyone else.
The second novel, though, was high-concept, and I wrote a huge chunk of in one of the most self directed periods of my life. I worked longer and more consistently on it than I did my dissertation for university. Then my computer died, and could only be fixed by a full reinstall.
I bought a new computer after a while, and that one was killed by an update to Windows 10. I put it aside, not having had the time to reinstall Windows to fix it, and now ity won't turn back on at all.
I'm beginning to think Windows is just not a reliable piece of software.
I use mobile phones for most of my computer access these days, and I've just bought a Bluetooth keyboard to make writing on one more practical; this blog is by way of a test. So far it seems to work fairly well. It's slightly smaller than a normal keyboard, but still big enough to type on in a practical way.
I don't know why I'm concerned about writing. All people I was ever bothered about were blown away by my talents, but in the wider world I get no feedback but ringing apathy or even outright derision. I suspect that all writers feel this way, even slightly moderately successful ones. Do the star authors like Rowling or King have such anxieties, I wonder? Do they sit in marble mansions laughing uproariously at bad tempered critics, secure in the knowledge that any criticism is jealousy or ignorance, or do they merely feel like they are getting away with something?
I have honestly no idea. I know merely this. A writer writes, is compelled to write, even if it's only a baseline tapping away ephemera that float off into the night like bonfire embers. There may be fewer fireworks to accompany my work but it continues to blaze away.
Is that a good sentence? I liked it, so it probably isn't. Ah, well. I will continue to produce something, and will try and make myself do it here, even if I can't produce the next great American novel. I'm not even American, so that would be a stretch anyway.
