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Today, I am pleased to say that it is 9:52 p.m. and I haven’t written a word all day. Most days during nano this would drive me mad. Honestly most days in my life, period, this would drive me mad. Today though I am making an exception. You see last night I got home from the meet up and was stretching my wrists when all of a sudden my tendinitis flared. It hurt to do anything with them, up to and including not doing anything.
It stopped me from posting last night, which is why I posted first thing when I woke up this morning. I’m very lucky in that most of my blog posts I can do without having to resort to actual typing. My Dragon NaturallySpeaking works very well for that. For actual writing of course, it sucks. Something about the way I talk when I’m writing to the way I think when I’m writing makes it very hard for Dragon understand me.
So today, after much deliberation, I decided to take the day off. I know that it is nano and that its it is one of my few days that I’m not working that this nano is about more for me than just hitting 50,000. It’s also about learning about myself as a writer, learning how to take myself out of a writing space and put into an editing space and learning how to treat my writing like it’s a job. I don’t want to take all the fun out of it, but I do want to be responsible enough to be able to do this full-time. Sometimes that means knowing when not to write.
So my word count won’t change today. However it isn’t changing not because I made an EXCUSE, but because I made a CHOICE.
On the other hand I won’t say I mind reading a couple dozen manga’s of Shugo Chara at all (Ikuto all the way!).
Here’s hoping that you all reached your word count for the day, whether that was zero or 10K.
P.S. – I’m pretty sure that my Chara would look something like this.
Posted in Blogs on November 9th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
It’s been a bit of a long week for me. I went from writing for myself in my spare time and not worrying about much to having four full projects that I’m behind on and getting both acclaims and declaims at my day job. It’s a good sort of busy in my opinion. The only thing stopping me from writing to my heart’s content is my hand. My tendinitis is acting up, almost as violently bad as it was the first time it started hurting. I lost one weekend having to let it literally do nothing. Now however, I feel like I need to start writing again. Fortunately about a year and a half ago I bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This software allows you to go from talk to text and I can literally say that it’s been a lifesaver.
I must admit that I was very slow to start off using it. It does take a lot of getting used to and even now I don’t really have the same satisfying feeling of cracking keys under my fingers. However, I have been working on it and it’s a lot more natural now than it was when I first started. Using it still isn’t usually my first thought, but it is coming more frequently and easily. The really nice thing is that it understands almost everything I say, from character names to social media words like twitter. This means that I can use it for pretty much everything and just let my hand rest. And trust me I wish I could use it at my day job. If I could do that I could probably get my hands completely cured. As an update for all of you, I am going to be going to a doctor about it later this week so that I can see if there’s anything more I can do to start the healing process and actually have it stick.
As a final update, I wanted to let you all know that I have been saying the words, “I am a Great Writer” and that it has been getting easier. My husband insists that when I say around him I also have to include that I’m a great chef, a great wife, a great GM(Game Master) and other things that he thinks I don’t give myself enough credit for. Having done this for a few days now but I can see the value of it. Just as you need a writing space that suits you and that will make it better for you to write (remembering that it’s just as much about your of mindset as it is about your physical space) you need your mind to work with you instead of making it more difficult to do the simplest things. While I’m certain that there is a moral lesson in there about the value of positive thinking I’m just happy it’s working and that now I can finally get back to writing.
Are you working on your writing still? What completions or setbacks have you experienced? And what mindset you have to be in or rituals do you have to do to get you into writing? As always leave a comment at the bottom! I love hearing how all of you deal with the craft and occasional setbacks of writing.
Posted in Blogs on April 26th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
Well, it’s been a while since I last blogged and all I can really say is that I’ve been busy. No real excuses. I’ve also been getting a bit more sleep lately, heading to bed just that bit earlier which has really been helping. I suppose it doesn’t help that I thought I’d updated earlier this week when I hadn’t. Well, lets get started on what’s been up with me the past ten days.
First off, Nanowrimo was such a roaring success that I am starting to work on it again. Other than the fact that I need to go through it with a fine tooth comb for errors, it’s pretty darn good. This lets me know that I really need to train dragon more or perhaps just that I need to eyeball it a heck of a lot more than I do my regular typing. On the good side of Dragon, my writing has for the most part been understandable which is good. It means that I will have very little issues with editing it. I will be able to go through and figure out what I’ve missed reasonably easily. I could start doing that this month, but I think I’m going to wait for March and start doing that as part of my 50 hours of editing. Perhaps its a bit of a cheat, but I don’t really think it is. I am going to try and do WriYe again. However, my yearly total will be vastly lower than the 300K I set myself up for last year. I’m not certain how much I wrote last year and while I know that it was more than 200,000 I am pretty darn sure that I wasn’t actually able to make it to 300K. This year my total will also be 300K…. mainly because it makes my math really easy and I found a new program that can help me out with that.
The program I found is an awesome little online program/website that is pretty darn simple, but really useful for the average writer like me that enjoys writing but likes having a challenge. It’s called 750 Words and it’s a website that challenges you to write 750 words a day. The creator said he heard that other writers said that writing 3 pages of words a day was a good idea, especially if you were just clearing your mind and getting ready for the day. He figured out how many words approximately that was and it came out to 250 words a page (though he did add that, really, had the address http://750words.com been already taken, he would have changed it to 249 words a day instead). So, the site challenges you to write 750 words a day, although you can certainly write more if you wish. So far I’ve been using it as my default writer, especially when I’m at work (which will irritate my bosses even though I’m only doing it on my break). It also really makes you feel that you have been writing by having a wonderful little points system. It keeps track of how much you’ve written, how many days in a row you’ve written, how many distractions you had while writing, what you wrote about, and a lot of other data that’s sorta superfluous but is really fun to play with.
Obviously, I am enjoying the program and in fact, this blog post has gained me my first badge (not counting the one you get once you’ve written anything down, whether you reached any goals or not. That one is an egg, just in case you’re wondering). My first badge is that of the Turkey, which means that I had three days in a row when I have not only written, but written enough to fill 3 pages (750 words) with writing. It does make me insanely happy, although perhaps it shouldn’t. The one after this is I believe Penguin at 5 days… Regardless, I think I will keep you updated on which badges and how many I’ve gotten before. Also, while I don’t think that I need to overly annoy you guys with how much I’m writing, I think I will start posting how much I’ve written since I last wrote a blog post on here… Perhaps forcing myself to do some math when I write up these posts will keep me from missing them. After all, two days worth of math is a heck of a lot easier than 10 days!
That’s about it for now though, and I won’t be done writing for the day… Just done writing here. Now, off to work on my book!
WORDS WRITTEN SINCE LAST BLOG POST: 4976
Posted in Blogs on December 18th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
November, all in all, has become in recent years a high flying energy period where I write insanely and notice how and where I’ve improved in the last year. Most people probably wouldn’t choose to do this sort of reflection while they’re writing a novel in a month, but I’m a little wild (re: crazy) and I know it. I also know that this year has been very different than the last two. I’m still noticing what I’ve improved on (more on that later), but the high flying excitement that comes from writing a novel in a month along with over 200,000 other people worldwide, seems to be lacking this year. I’ve thought about this perplexing question and finally come up with an answer as to the reason.
I made the mistake of going into this Nanowrimo without a clear defined goal of what “winning” would mean. Okay, that’s not entirely true… I’ve been desperately holding onto last year’s meaning and that’s where the problem was.
Two years ago my goal for winning was “finish the story or add more than 50k words to the WIP” and that worked great. It’s the year that I consider my first, since I only took part in 2007 for about 4 days total before I realized that I was simply too overloaded to give it a good go. That definition worked well because I wasn’t sure how much I could write, and I wasn’t sure how long the story was going to be. Last year, it was “Write more than 67, 306 words (my total from the year before)” but it changed halfway through the month to become, “Get into the top 5 word count totals in the city”. I succeeded that year as well, finishing the month having written 83,083 words and having the 3rd highest word count in Calgary.
This year though, I went in with a vague undefined goal. “Use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to do my novel and write over 100K/completely finish my first draft (in case it only came out to 90k)”. Unfortunately, Dragon isn’t as reliable as I could wish and I’m still spending a lot of time working with it. I’m not sure if I just have a difficult accent to follow or what, but Dragon has issues with me. I’m only a little slower with it than I am normally typing, but I am slower. In addition, I agreed to other items on my plate… I’m gaming twice this month (not typing at them either), I had to write two music reviews (a few hours each, but I’ve only finished one so far) and I agreed to write a short story for our gaming group (Finished, it came in at 1679 words plus a bit of time for editing and research – I’ll probably post it sometime).
I also injured myself, somehow winding up with a pinched nerve in my neck. For a week and a half I was in quite a bit of pain, and couldn’t turn my head much at all. It’s completely better now (I’m just shy of full mobility and I have no pain unless I’m pushing it), but that still doesn’t help me make up for the lost time when I hurt too much to write like I am used to in November. Even with my husband helping me clean the house more often (and doing my jobs a bit) I find myself constantly falling behind.
Right now, I’m about 5k behind on my word count, but I do have vacation coming up at the end of the month. As I said though, I’m disappointed in what I have accomplished due to my low word count. I still had the dream of me easily running the finish line and getting over 100K, but with these issues, it’s just not a practical one. It can sometimes be hard to understand the difference between a dream and a goal… So, I’m redefining my goal.
My goal this Nanowrimo is to write 50K of a rough draft using my Talk-to-Text program for at least 60% of the work. So far this puts me on task. I’m only sitting at 36,217 words and about 50 – 60% of them were written using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
I won’t finish my novel this month and in fact it looks as though my novel will come in bloated at 130K to 150K when I’m done. Fortunately, a bloated word count can be fixed in post.
For the final question of what did I learn this past year, I would have to say that my area of real improvement is both in writing in order and keeping a plot together. The other thing that I’m learning is to do technically what I already do naturally, at least in part. I’ve been learning to understand what I do and have been able to spot when I’m not doing what I should (like realizing ‘oh, I haven’t even described what this room is’). I have even found myself correcting while doing the writing. It’s a hard job, remembering everything that needs to go into a good book, but to quote Neil Gaiman, “…sometimes you FLY, and that pays for everything.”
Posted in Blogs on November 25th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 6 Comments »
Well, I just had a killer of a weekend trying to play catch up with my word total. Friday I didn’t get to write at all since I had gaming directly after I got home from work. Unfortunately, the incomplete sleep that I’ve been getting all week finally caught up with me, and I slept like the dead. At least until I woke up out of a sound sleep around 6:30 – 7 am. What a pain in the neck, literally. I tried putting heat on it and went back to sleep, but I could hardly move and there was a lot of pain. When I did wake up again, I couldn’t move at all for a moment. Finally I made it out to the living room. I started writing, slowly and painfully, trying to ignore everything but the writing.
When my husband woke up he said I most likely had a pinched nerve. Unfortunately, chiropractors apparently don’t work on weekends (or at least on Saturdays after 2 pm) and I didn’t feel it was necessary to head to the emergency. My husband helped me stretch and that seemed to help as well. Off hand, it’s always amazing to me exactly how stretching a leg can help anything in my neck. I understand why it works, yet I always seem surprised when it does. In my mind, there’s a heck of a lot of space and stuff between the muscles in my legs and the ones in my neck. I’ll keep you updated regardless. And I suppose even with the pain I was able to write about 2000 words, so it definitely was still a good day.
Sunday was much better. The stretches really helped and I had a lot more of my mobility back so writing was much easier. Through word wars on the Calgary Nanowrimo Chat, I was able to write just over 4000 words. I’m now up to 11,135 and I’m only about 500 words behind. Okay, so I started writing this on Monday Night after I got home… I got no writing done Monday or Tuesday (not writing on my lunch breaks kills me, but saves my hand from the crippling Tendonitis demons), so I’m 5535 words behind. Fortunately, I have both Wednesday and Thursday off from work, so plenty of time both days to catch up.
This entire year seems to be turning out that way…I ignore my writing for a few days, let my wrist rest and my tendinitis get a bit better and then catch up in an extravaganza of writing. It’s very odd, since in all my prior years I’ve worked best by getting my daily count (plus) every day. This could just be a continuation of “first week = slump week” for me, but I guess I’ll have to see if the rest of the month continues like this.
EDIT: Yep, it was indeed a pinched nerve. I saw a Chiropractor on Monday and I’m feeling mostly better. I’m still getting shooting pain up my neck and my back muscles still refuse to relax and soften, but I have mobility. He said it would take 3-4 sessions but after that, I should have no more pain. I’m going in for my second session later today.
Posted in Blogs on November 10th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
Day Four of Nanowrimo has come and while it’s not gone yet, it is quite close to going. Yesterday’s goal for Nanowrimo was 5001 and today’s total will be 6778. So how close am I to my totals? Well, as of yesterday my total was at 5078, so a little bit ahead of where I was supposed to be. However, I haven’t gotten anything written today, and I know that I won’t be able to meet my total today. Even so, one low day doesn’t mean anything. In fact normally I don’t hit any of my totals in the first week of Nanowrimo. Usually I don’t even hit 7K by the end of week one. The fact that I’ve been on total for all of the other days heartens me. What I really consider my victory is that 4k of my current total was done by using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This is a really big move for me, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m already seeing the benefits of using a Talk-To-Text program in my writing (I’m also seeing the detriments as well, but that will be for later).
Dragon offers me the ability to still write and type, when my tendonitis gets bad and to its credit, it does it well. I think my tendonitis has become a forever thing at this point and it horrifies me that it seems to be changing into a weather ache as well. I now understand two types of pain, active pain (which really hurts) and passive pain (which still hurts, but as it’s relatively constant, it starts fading into the background), but I digress. This is a writing blog, not one I complain or rant on. I find that I’m slower writing with Dragon than I am when I just type, especially when I still have to correct names and words quite often using it. However, I also notice that I go back to delete less, since I spend longer thinking about what I want to say.
I think part of the reason I made so many mistakes before was because I thought faster than I could type, so I would be 2-4 sentences ahead of what my fingers were still typing… I’d get ahead of myself and have to go back to change my word choices. I think that by the time this nano is over, I will be able to use Dragon without having to make corrections at all (in so much as that’s possible anyway).
So, this being just a quick update, I’ll say that yes, I’ve been writing, it’s been going well, even though I’m a little bit behind and that I’m not at all worried yet. Oh, and as a final cheery moment for me, Dragon finally got my characters name right yesterday… Sometimes it’s the small victories that count for the most. Also, I submitted my review for Omnia’s newest album, Wolf Love and as soon as the article goes up on Pagan Radio, I’ll post a copy over here. In the meantime, how is your Nanowrimo trip going! Excellent? Or could you use a little encouragement? Let me know, and remember to tell me about what your story is about.
Posted in Blogs on November 4th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 4 Comments »
This is just a quick little hello, from my corner of cyberspace to all of my readers and for once, it’s not from my little home in Calgary, AB. That’s right, everybody, I am in Surrey, BC attending the SiWC!
The classes have been great so far (mostly), I won a book by KC Dyer (her book launch for it is this weekend) and the people have been worth talking to.
I even have some big news (for me) about my novel… nothing so big as an agent or editor/publisher interested, but lets just say my Blue Pencil meeting went well, but more on that later since I could gush for hours.
As for everything else, the flight was perfect and I got through customs on both sides quickly, visiting the family was awesome (Hi Mom!) and seeing my friends that I haven’t seen in years was great (I never got to show you Dragon! I’m sooo sorry!).
I miss my husband immensely and while I can’t wait to see him again, I also have to admit that this has been a really great experience so far. Given the chance, I think that I would come next year, though of course, it all depends on the situations at the time.
I also cannot wait for Nanowrimo to begin, though I am going to be changing my challenge slightly. Since my tendinitis is really bad right now, I think I’m going to back off my 100K words and try for a similarly difficult goal. 50K using mostly Dragon NaturallySpeaking instead of typing. So, who’s up for joining me in a slightly off challenge for Nano? Anyone else talking instead of typing?
That’s it for me though. There’s a fun little play going on here called Shock Theatre and I think that I’m awake enough to attend, so I’ll be heading downstairs to partake in the “Experience”! Until next time, keep writing everyone!
Posted in Blogs on October 22nd, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 11 Comments »
I have been looking at my own work recently, and trying to decide how best to prepare for Nanowrimo while finishing up my current WIP. Of course, the new project is shinier… It’s new, I haven’t thought about it for months or years, and I haven’t seen ¾ of the book and decided that its crap. The fact that 4 months ago I thought this work was good and now I’m looking at it and worrying that its unsalvageable means that I’ve probably reached that area of the book where all authors suddenly think their work is bad and horrible. On the other hand, I also know (unfortunately) that I’m not yet skilled enough to be able to decide on my own. Of course, my husband says that the story is engaging and interesting but I know that he has a vested interest in it. I wish that I was part of a writing group so that I could pass around a chapter or so and find out what it looks like.
I’m really hoping that I can finish it before SiWC. One of the classes I’m really looking forward to is the one Master Class that I sighed up for. It’s taught by Robert J. Ray. It’s called “Welcome to Your Novel Rewrite”. Since this is really the area I feel I need help in, I’m very excited. I say that I’m rewriting my novel now, but I know that what I’m actually doing right now is perhaps the smallest part of the rewrite… filling in scenes that I didn’t write during November. A small amount of this will be at the beginning, and I’m doing it now. I also know that I condensed an entire scene into the words “romance montage… write when you have inspiration”. I now know what’s supposed to go there (and it’s not really a romance montage, but a scene detailing characters getting to know each other/teaching of the magic system mix) and so I should finally be able to write it down. I know I also need to rewrite the ending. The end of last nano was a bit of insanity for me and I was desperately trying to get 10k words in three days. Not that I required it to win… but I wanted to get more words than a young girl who writes here in Calgary (she routinely hits 100K during the month).
Even so, the main problem with my ending isn’t actually that it’s bad, but that it doesn’t follow the storyline anymore. What had happened is that about 4 days before the end of Nanowrimo, I realized that the story was no longer going where I thought it needed to at the beginning of the month. Instead of writing organically and seeing where the ending needed to go, I ran straight back to my outline trying to write those scenes. Since they no longer fit the story it was hard going, and even harder to fix, since I didn’t realize what had happened when I tried to start editing it.
This is all part of the very painful process know as Improvement. It can also be a very painful process. What it teaches you is that the good work you were doing before isn’t good… in fact it may be painfully bad. For most of us though, the hardest part of this is proving to ourselves that we can get better.
On that note, one of the things that are going to help me prepare to write is the beautiful inspiring Miyazaki film, Whispers of the Heart. This movie is about a girl who falls in love with a boy who seems to know exactly where he wants his life to go. She is amazed at his dedication when he travels to Italy to study for two months towards his dream. Though he also likes her, she is unsure if she is good enough to be with him since she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life at all. She decides to try writing a novel while he is gone. When she is finished she invariably says it’s horrible, but a friend tells her that what it and she needs is polishing. Like a gemstone, it’s dirty and flawed when you pull it out of the ground. Only through work and knowledge can you make it into a thing of true beauty. I now keep a geode on my desk to remind of the fact that even when my writing looks like stupid ordinary rock that it can still be polished to a thing of beauty and something worth publishing.
Other things that I need to finish before Nanowrimo are:
1. Cleaning up my office so that all the garbage is gone and it’s organized. Even if I don’t have my bookshelves by that time, I would like the room to be clean. When it’s a mess, I don’t want to go in and remember that I need to clean it, especially during Nano.
2. Reading a few pages of writing into my computer about my characters for this months novel… I want Dragon to recognize what I’m saying when I talk about Xiam and Zack (the main characters in the novel). Corrections and changes only slow you down during Nanowrimo and I’d rather have as few of those as possible.
3. My novel, nicknamed “Seirei” and called “Memories Written in Moonlight” finished, or at least finished enough that I don’t mind other people seeing it.
4. I would like to have cards done before I attend the conference, even if they only have my name, website address and “Writer of Dark Fantasy” on them.
Everything else can wait if they need to. On a more personal front, I still do not have “The High King of Montival”… The store was out of them. “Mr. Monster” is out now as well for purchase, so I’ll grab both when I head into the bookstore around October 15. This weekend I am gaming, playing my little Whore Queen, Demona… hopefully, I’ll have some wonderful little tidbit to mention in my next blog about that.
Also, coming up mid to end of October… Pictures of my Writing Space! Keep an ear out and I’ll keep you updated on my progress until I put out the pics!
Posted in Blogs on September 29th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 7 Comments »
Today’s blog is running a bit behind so expect it to be a bit brief. I’ll make certain that I have a new blog post up Saturday for you guys. I got a bit sick a few weeks ago. The sucky weather Calgary has been having got into my hand, and my Tendonitis was so bad that I couldn’t close my hand into a fist or re-open it when I managed to. While this did curtail my writing, rest assured, I have gotten some done… Although, instead of using my computer, I have the scene written up in paper copy right now and working on it while taking the bus to and from work. The scene is turning out really well and I’ll be using a certain program of mine to add it to the computer.
That’s right, it’s time to talk a bit more about my Dragon! I’ve been using it more frequently of late, and now I can give a better opinion on it. My over all opinion is pretty good of it, though it’s near useless for using online. The commands activate whether you want them to or not, which means that trying to write text into a forum chat box or updated any social media site is out of the question (it works much better in actual messenger programs, like MSN Messenger).
This experience really reminded me why I got that program, even if sometimes I do worry that it’s more trouble than it’s worth (if I have a stuffed up nose it can’t understand me at all).
Using it has been teaching me to think more about what I write before I say/type it. I still have to delete things every once in a while, but it happens much less often now that I’ve been training myself not to screw it up. I do suggest that everyone give it a try though, since I am actually coming to enjoy using it. While I’m not using it to write this blog post (more for brevity reasons than anything else), it is on the computer and I have been training it to understand me. I am going to be training it to understand me, by using it at least 2 days out of every week to do all my writing… Something I hope to continue during Nanowrimo as well. (Remember to add me as a Buddy if you want to follow my counts during Nano!)
I’ll keep you all updated on that front.
Other than using Dragon and resting my hand, I have been keeping myself mostly out of trouble. I am still reading Brandon Sanderson’s “The Way of Kings”. I am 66% finished it and I’d like to say that it’s pretty damn awesome. It’s definitely an epic fantasy, told from a few different viewpoints. The only question I currently have is about the character Kaladin. While he is a wonderful character, Brandon Sanderson has been writing his chapters in a Present/Past sort of set up where we get one chapter of where he is now, and then we’ll get a chapter that led him to this point. While its really interesting, I am wondering why he choose to write it that way. I assume I will have discovered the answer in the next three-hundred and fifty pages.
I have also finally gotten notice that my long awaited copy of “The High King of Montival” is finally shipping. I should have that next week, or the first week of October at the latest. It will be next on my reading list after “The Way of Kings”. I also picked up Aprilynne Pike’s debut YA novel, “Wings”. While I don’t often read YA paranormal romance books anymore (Damn you Twilight), I heard about this one on Writing Excuses and decided to give it a try. I am also listening to “www: Watch”, a book by Robert J. Sawyer. If you haven’t heard of this series yet (beginning with “www: Wake”) pick them up. This set of novels is definitely worth your time and interest, although I give fair warning… Mr. Sawyer has a thing for ‘soft’ endings… They answer all the questions but do seem to leave you wondering why you’re vaguely unsatisfied. Perhaps it’s a problem with a super long dénouement feeling, instead of the hopeful awed feeling he was going for. I’ll keep you updated on all of the books I’m reading, as usual.
Oh, I’m going to try to write a review of Dan Wells “I am Not a Serial Killer” and post it up here prior to Nanowrimo as well… Expect new site changes in the next few weeks as well!
What are you reading? And will you be participating in Nanowrimo this year? Are there any great podcasts dealing with Nanowrimo that you’ve been listening to? Let me know, and keep those comments coming!
Oh, one final comment for all of you out there… Less than a month until my conference! I am soooo excited.
Posted in Blogs on September 23rd, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 5 Comments »
Today I think I’d like to talk about this about the “mask”. In psychology the mask was used to show the difference between our inner and outer selves. It was a very quiet child and I learned early that most people did not seem to see the world the same way I did. Thus I created my mask very early on. Irregardless of the fact that I have a blog, I don’t tend to let many people into the secret place when my true self was contained. A lot of this is due to the low self-confidence I developed as a child. However, even then I wanted to be strong. So when I was lonely or scared, instead of hiding I stood behind the mask. That aspect of me I had made brave and perhaps as stupid as any heroine in a book I’d read. Somehow, it allowed me to pretend that I didn’t mind the loneliness or the isolation we all feel.
Somewhere along the way, I started acting brave as my natural defense to anything happening to me. Someone picking on me? Well, I’d use my intelligence to stomp them down into a twig. Someone laughing at me? Of course, it was because they were simply “too common” to understand what I was about. After I met my husband, he helped me to come out of my shell, I realized that the mask I’d thought I was just hiding behind, was just as valid as the small terrified child I that I had always envisioned as me. I learned that instead of hiding behind my mask I could be my mask . I still feel terror at trying new things or explaining to people that they can’t bully me; however, I also learned the wisdom that being brave doesn’t mean that you’re not afraid. It simply means that you can find the heart to stand up for your beliefs.
I firmly believe that this truth is one of the hardest to learn, and like all truths it sounds deceptively simple. We can all learn the ‘truths’ and speak the maxims by heart, but only by learning what it feels like to understand those words can we begin to speak those words to others. Otherwise, we are just speaking maxims that we know nothing about. I am considered a wise person by those who know me, even if I am not usually thought of as smart, mainly because through my experiences I have learned much. Through the grace of the Gods I also seem able to convey that learning through to others. It is a true blessing to be able to help those I can, although I will admit that my heart always races when I speak of wisdom to others because of a quote I heard once.
“All Wisdom truly says the same thing… be more like me.”
It is quotes like this that have stuck with me and so I try to make certain that my wisdom is not simply repeating age old maxims and/or telling people to be like me.
Moving to a different topic before I start getting preachy about how we dispense wisdom, I would like to change the current topic. Without going into too much detail (since if you follow my blog you already know) I developed tendinitis just over a year ago. Usually it’s not much of a bother but just in case last year I purchased a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It’s one of those awesome talk-to-text programs that allows you to speak instead of type. Now I know I’ve been pretty bad in trying to actually use it, mainly because I prefer the feel of keys under my fingers. Tapping away the keyboard has always been very relaxing to me ever since I learned how to properly type. While I suppose that talking to my computer will eventually be very relaxing as well right now I do feel rather slow.
It’s working rather well I will give it that. So long as I’m not sick and the longer I use it the easier it gets and the more correct it becomes. Right now, I have trained it enough that only one word in every 30 to 40 needs to be corrected. I’m also getting much better at remembering the commands for it. However, and this is what’s really slowing me down, I really have to stop and think about what I’m going to say. This was a very odd concept for me and even now it still sounds very odd. I mean if you don’t know if you’re going to say how are you supposed to say it. Shouldn’t saying it immediately mean that you know how you want to say it? What I’ve learned is that this is apparently not the case.
When I type I must admit I’m one of those people who will delete a line three or four times to make certain I have gotten it out the way I want it. Dragon NaturallySpeaking doesn’t really take away that option, but it does make me think more about my words. After all, what it takes so much longer to get something out the last thing you want to be doing is correcting every fifth think that learning how to use this property will actually make my writing better. What I’m doing now, in addition to actually writing, is learning how to properly think about what I want to say so that I don’t have to think about it when I’m typing.
While this will be slower now I believe that this will make me a faster and much more precise typist in the future. While I don’t think I’ll ever be surely happy with my hand being injured like this, it is very comforting to know that my stories will still be able to be told, even if I do have to talk to my computer to do so. One thing I will have to keep in mind is my propensity for run-on sentences. When you’re talking a sentence can go on and on and I for one don’t generally notice if it’s getting too long. After all, if I start to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, it doesn’t automatically mean that the sentences too long. Knowing that I’ll be looking over my writing much more closely because of this should help my predisposition towards writing longer sentences.
This post is going rather long, so I’ll stop for now. I am 31.2% of the way through Brandon Sanderson “The way of Kings” and I went to go see the new movie earlier today. Resident Evil: Apocalypse will probably be in my next blog… expect it!
Posted in Blogs on September 10th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 2 Comments »
