writing on computers

It’s a problem that most of us haven’t considered. More writers than ever before look to the ease of the computer and word processing to practice their craft with an unprecedented ease. The days of scribbling notes in margins and scratching through lines has, except for a few nostalgic stalwarts, become a quaint reminder of life sans the digital.

But the problem comes not during the process, but after it: during the preservation.

You might imagine that saving files on computers—say, a Microsoft Word .doc on a flashdrive—would present easy access and storage for an archivist. Surely much more so than dusty, half-decayed papers in an early 20^th-century writer’s old desk. But what about when .doc becomes redundant and flash drives are as antiquated as floppy drives? How do previous drafts and notes and sketches of writers become preserved for future generations, when they may be stored on a piece of technology destined to become outmoded by the end of the month?

In Patricia Cohen’s New York Times article “Fending Off Digital Decay, Bit by Bit,” she examines just this problem. The line that sums it up best: “Imagine having a record but no record player.” This is forcing museums and archives to get creative in how they save and display digital works. Emory University, for example, has created an exhibit that emulates Salman Rushdie’s 90s-style ‘electronic universe’, with interactive technology that allows visitors to experience how Rushdie worked.

And even more exciting ideas are already being tossed around with regards to the writers of today: viewing websites an author browsed while writing, for instance.

But problems abound: how to convert old technology when many of today’s archivists are unfamiliar with the processes involved? (In fact, Cohen states that mostly it is police archivists who are able to work with old files and covert them into usable formats.) What to do if one accidentally deletes a precious file? (If you’ve ever done that, then you’ll recall the panic it causes.) How to protect something with no physical form, when the elements can destroy what it is being saved on? (For all that pen and paper may seem quaint, acid-free paper is much easier to store in bulk over time than a CD.)

It will be up to preservationists and archivists and curators to find new and inventive ways to capture the world of the writer, when so much of the formerly physical has become the intangibly digital. But you as a writer can certainly take steps toward preserving your own works and processes through fun and inventive ways. Take photographs of your writing space (and create physical copies!). Keep a journal (in an old-fashioned spiral journal, perhaps!). Make lists of websites you visit and articles you scan through. Make videos (burn them to a DVD, and keep the original digital file for when the next big video format comes through!). Keep a blog, then create your own POD book of the entries.

Exhausting, but writers interested in leaving behind legacies of more than just their books should certainly be interested in how the world of writing and its preservation continues to evolve.

Sort of makes you nostalgic for the typewriter, doesn’t it?