Juvenilia

January 26th, 2012

Today I came across a book (or rather, a manuscript) I wrote waaay back in 1990, when I was a young ‘un. Like twelve years old. This wasn’t my first attempt at writing. I’d been hammering away at my grandparents ancient typewriter for years and was delighted to receive a brand spanking new ELECTRONIC TYPEWRITER (woooah!) for my 12th birthday. But then I started grammar school, where they had five – FIVE! – shiny Apple Mac computers – the type that looked like this -

They also had a laserjet printer. I remember thinking I’d died and gone to heaven. Or that I was in some kind of technologically advanced nirvana when I slotted in my floppy disk – you know, the new kind that wasn’t actually floppy – and opened up all seven of my manuscripts on screen. It was a very exciting time.

(My kids still look at me funny when I wax lyrical about the days of cassette tapes and black and white televisions. They must think I’m about a hundred years old.)

Anyhoo, these computers just about rocked my world. I stayed behind after school most days so I could seize upon the opportunity to write. I’m sure my friends thought I was a bit weird. My home life wasn’t awesome, either, so I killed two birds with one stone. This was one of the outcomes of that time:

I chuckled a little when I saw the computer graphics added to the text, like this one of a wine glass and some grapes – completely unrelated to the text, but Clipart was a far cry from typing on a typewriter (which involved nothing more glamourous than corrector fluid and chafed fingers…)

Next time, the novel I wrote (or typed) when I was 10, a sort of ‘Lovely Bones’ tale called ‘Teen Ghost’…

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