Sunday 4 March 2018

Old News

I am currently working on a couple of new books. These will be compilations of spells which have appeared over the years in the Raven Newsletters. This has meant trying to find as many old editions of the Newsletter as possible.
     Luckily I believe in keeping hard copies of everything I do on the computer - the 'paperless office' is a myth as far as I am concerned. Especially as I use a pc until it becomes:
a) obsolete
or b) gives up the ghost - usually with a puff of smoke.

     But even I am amazed at how far back I have kept copies of Newsletters and Catalogue masters - 1994 was the earliest I found !
     Those were the days when we were using a state of the art Amstrad pcw and dot matrix printer!
     Actually I think the Amstrad was probably on its last legs by then, the dot matrix printer certainly was! The quality of printing was bloody awful, especially as we printed on green (yes bright green) re-cycled paper, which was not the same quality as these days.
    These days our Raven Newsletters are a proper, mini magazine booklet with a sort of set format, with an editorial/newsy bit on the front pages and dates for your diary on the back, with poems, spells and articles laid out inside.
    Back in 1994 it was a single A4 sheet but with mini versions of all the parts we now have proper space for, just as an introduction to a mail shot, which were all stapled together in one corner.
     Those were the days when I couldn't put any pictures in, so I would draw illustrations around the edges, and occasionally managed to create illustrations using the regular typewriter keys - this was before you could even have multiple fonts (and maybe explains my fondness for Times New Roman).
     It is nice looking back to see what I have written about over the years.
     And it is also giving me ideas about other stuff I want to write about now!



No comments:

Post a Comment