Historical Writing

I've found something I've dusted off from a while ago. It's the first full manuscript that I wrote that I still own (I have lost too many with the few computers that have crashed/ been stolen that I've forgotten to back up). The original was old enough to have rather dated language and references and is still currently being updated - it's only been a few years and it even references video tapes! How fast technology moves these days.

I've been through a few of my previous manuscripts, written within less than 10 years, and yet in that short amount of time it surprises me how terribly outdated most of the references are. Just a few decades ago you could have written stuff with technological references and they still would have been more than relevant after sitting around for 20 years. Now, if you ignore it more than 12 months, it's completely out of date. Even if you reference DVDs now, you know in a couple of years they'll probably non-existent and everyone will have 3D blu-ray players that also do the washing up, and DVDs will be relegated to the Science Museum and the Antiques Roadshow. Even the iBook laptop I wrote them on is now so old it struggles to run a basic old-version browser and I actually cannot update it because the processor is too old to take the new OS that is compatible with the latest version of the browser. That machine was brand-new only 8 short years ago, and has a fraction of the capability of its updated replacement in the shops (and it's at least the 3rd upgrade to it in that time).

It's one thing to read books that are "classic" now (say, Jane Austen/Shakespeare etc) and appreciate that was "modern" at the time, and old-fashioned now - they were, of course written several hundred years ago. It's another thing to read a book from 1991 and wonder at the historical, ancient, old fashioned and antiquated references to Walkmans (Walkmen?), video tapes, DOS computers, SuperNintendo and actually going to the shops if you want to buy something. It's slightly disconcerting when you realise you lived in that time-once-gone, and you're not 95 years old. In fact, you're barely 30 and the things that were state-of-the-art when you were 15 are now in the science museum and already classed as "historical". It sits somewhere between mind-boggling and terrifying.

Looking through something written at the turn of the Millennium, it seems even more clear at how lightening-fast the world moves now. You would think that things referenced in something written in 2005 would be "up to date"... Except even then iTunes was a theory, 1GB was an impressive amount of RAM, a Hard Drive of 100GB was amazing, and if you wanted to watch a film you went and bought on in Woolies or you rented one at Blockbuster. And if you were a gamer you still only had a PS2, and if you wanted to play with your friends they actually had to come round with spare pads. It's only 6 years ago, yet it's a different life. It makes me rather weary of changing the references with updated ones, and the fact that in a couple of years they'll be outdated and I'll have to change them all over again, as well as using these references in anything new that I write.

Of course, there's always the other option - sell it as retro/historical fiction. It'll be totally authentic because it's at least written in the era it was based in. A bit like Jane Austen, only without the nice houses, dowries and pretty frocks. Instead it'll be based around CDs, skinny jeans, dial-up internet, original white iPod with clicking wheel, and computers that still run on that antiquated nightmare,Windows Vista.


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