Feb 022006
I have a bunch of old Wordperfect files on my computer that I haven’t been able to open in a long while because Microsoft Word was all like “Wordperfect? What the hell is Wordperfect?” I also have no idea what I did with my ancient copy of WP. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner, but I downloaded OpenOffice yesterday, which had no problems converting my old files.
I was just going through some of these files, many of which go back to my junior and senior years in college. There are a few term papers, letters to friends (not e-mails, but actual letters that had to be inserted into stamped envelopes), and some excruciatingly bad poetry. I was such an angsty, earnest kid and more than a little self-absorbed. Like most kids in college, I had a lot of emotional peaks and valleys and those were the times when I seemed to be compelled to write.
I really should delete some of this stuff, especially the poetry. But if I ever do have any success with writing, I might want someone to shove it in my face once in a while, just to keep me humble.
I LOVED your poetry! Do I have bad taste? You wrote one about having wings, I think, that I really liked. If you really want to see bad, angsty, college kid writing, you should re-read some of the old Graphos mags from college. There’s some stuff in there that will make you cringe. (None of it mine, of course…)
I was at a client site teaching a couple weeks ago and the students were particularly enthusiastic about the same thing you mentioned, OpenOffice’s ability to open WordPerfect and a lot of other file formats. If you choose File > Open and click in the file format dropdown list, the types of files go on forever.
Good luck with the poetry! I’m totally inept in that area myself so anyone who tries is admirable.