A Family of Writers -- Sarah Nicholson

I worked out this month that I am not the only writer in my family, we all spend at least part of our days siting at our laptops typing away.

I blog, write flash fiction and am trying to craft my memoir.

My oldest son actually makes a living from writing as a sports journalist, something I find quite incredible as he never really enjoyed English at school. I must admit his grammar is probably better than mine, but at the drop of a hat he can throw in an odd cliche without sounding derivative.

Youngest son is a software engineer otherwise known as a computer programmer. He has recently started his first graduate job and has been writing, much of it in another language, computer code.

It’s still writing with rules for each line and a correct order of syntax for the code to be read by a machine but that’s as far as my knowledge extends – although I did read both his dissertations, I found his brother’s articles about tennis much more interesting.

As I said he has just started his first job and when he finished his first project the other week, he told me it was version 0.0.0.1

“What does that mean?”

“It needs testing, to see if there are any bugs in it. It’s not out in the wild.”

Well at least the conversation went a bit like that – I won’t let him read this or make a comment, he will pick holes and I fear my own writing has too many bugs in it. I've put a creative spin on the actual words used for artistic purposes, something he would never do.

But for all the differences I realised how similar our writing processes are.

We write something, read it, looking for the clunky bits that don’t work and then we go back and fix it.

It could be as simple as adding a comma into a sentence for clarity, or a complete rewrite of a paragraph because microwaves were not invented in the 1880s and our story has a massive plot hole.

In many ways his writing must be very precise, it’s not being read by a human brain that can detect nuance and irony but by a machine. 

He’s also getting feedback from colleagues to let him know if the programme is performing as they require it to. Perhaps there is another feature that would make it more user friendly?

I’m not sure what version he is up to now, has it reached the magic version 1.0.0.0? Maybe, but then it can still be tweaked and improved. Version 1.0.0.1

A bit of googling tells me there is no standard for “versioning” and different computer companies have their own variations. I’m sure many of you out there are tech savvy and this is not new as you download the latest software version onto your phones and tablets. All those numbers that I’ve never given much thought to before.

Perhaps many writers already use some kind of numbering system for saving their work and I am late to the party. I tend to just save documents as their title as much of my writing is short pieces but now, as I am getting to grips with editing my memoir I am beginning to number each new draft.

One day I will have a version with a tidy structure and all grammar mistakes will have been de-bugged. Then I can go ahead and publish.

Which is where the analogy ends because once published and set free there will be no chance to change even the tiniest full stop. Whereas for my son, his programme can always be refined, improved and added to.

Meanwhile after all our pontificating oldest son at his sports desk has filed four or five stories a day without the luxury of extensive edits.

Yes, we are a family of writers with similarities and differences in our styles, time constraints and even language.