I'm still reeling a bit from hitting the halfway mark, and I'm supposed to be taking a couple of days off for making progress (and because it's a holiday weekend); however, I scored a little something that I"m actually a bit excited about: a Logitech K400 wireless touch keyboard. If you compose on a laptop you know why I bought a keyboard. My HP laptop has a nice keyboard, but typing on a laptop keyboard for an extended amount of time can get really painful after a while... especially if, like me, you have some kind of repetitive motion injury.
Now this is a small keyboard that I can put on my lap, or on a board, or on a cushion (like right now) -- I can sit back, I can stretch out, I can move around and still type away... I can belly down on the floor with it; I can take it to he kitchen table while I eat (I'm 100% sure my wife would not appreciate that)... you get the point, and that is: anything to make writing more comfortable.
It's important, I can't stress it enough: if you are going to write on a computer (even if, like me, you are doing it mostly for fun) you should do what you can to make it as comfortable and enjoyable an experience as possible. Suffer for your art intellectually, not physically... once you jack up your hands, they don't come back... and surgery is expensive, so that means it's best avoided. Little tools like this are an investment in your ability to keep creating, and they're not particularly expensive... I paid around $40 for this little thing, and I'm already seeing a return on my investment.
Okay, so I'm officially off for the next two days (I have to work tomorrow... the real job, but that doesn't count... the break is from writing), and tomorrow my wife and I are headed to Austin to see Sparta in concert. Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend, and don't forget to take a moment to honor those who died protecting our freedom; raise a glass and toast. Cheers!
About Me
- Mr. G
- Dan Garcia resides in San Antonio, Texas, in a household ruled by a dog and a cat. These benign overlords allow Garcia, his wife, and two daughters to live with them so long as they are served unquestioningly. The dog and cat compel Garcia to write stories of imaginative fiction and fantasy; their rationale being: the potential for supplementary income from the sale of these stories means the possibility of more treats and toys for them. Thus, when not at work at the San Antonio Public Library, Garcia is permitted to craft his tales despite the fact that this activity limits his availability for scratching and petting. Hell-Kind is Garcia’s first novel which he was allowed to type because of his opposable thumbs and agile digits; the dog and cat did all of the actual heavy-lifting for the story, and are not particularly concerned with receiving credit for the book.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
The Half Way Mark
I'm half way done with the draft of my first novel. Hooray! I'm feeling under the weather, and I'm up way past my bed time, but I can't abide sitting around and not doing anything... so, in an effort to keep myself from going crazy, I used my down time to write. 50% down, 50% left to go... I'm feeling it. :)
Monday, May 21, 2012
Ha-ha, Jinx
So after posting on Saturday that nothing catastrophic had happened to me while composing bits of my novel on my smartphone, guess what happened? This morning I was working on a bit for an upcoming chapter, an action sequence actually, and my phone elected to freeze up on me just as I was about to hit the period and finish the scene. This caused the Diaro app to restart and it dumped my work into oblivion... Needless to say, I was not happy. This has happened to me before, although not while I was writing something for the novel. The problem was caused either by the Go Keyboard app or the live wallpaper, so I switched to SwiftKey X keyboard and turned off the live wallpaper... hopefully this won't happen again. See why I'm superstitious?
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Two postings in one day...
It's like a two for one sale!
So I read this article recently, this one: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/in-e-reader-age-of-writers-cramp-a-book-a-year-is-slacking.html?_r=1, and it really made me question whether I really wanted to pursue being a published author. The Reader's Digest version of the article is this: publisher and readers are putting more pressure on authors to put out material in a more rapid fashion. According to the article, the popularity of ebooks and reading devices has created a higher demand on authors... not necessarily an altogether bad thing; however, the article goes on to say that readers want more access to the author via social media and that they want a sense of ownership over the author's work -- the readers want to feel like they have some kind of say, that they can influence the outcome of the author's efforts.
Whoa there Bucky, now hold on just one God damned minute. I would love to build a base of readers who enjoy my stories, but I'm making one simple and plain declarative right now: I'm the boss around these here parts... keep that firmly in mind please. I'll write the stories and you, potential reader, will read the stories... it's a time-honored arrangement that has been working for a very long time. Two books a year is not that bad of a deal, and I think I can keep up that end of the bargain, but your contribution to this will be to use your imagination to participate in the fiction dream -- you need not expend any more effort than that. Deal? Shake on it? Groovy.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder...
Really, in this day and age, absence makes people forget all about you. As I have no followers, this all becomes largely an exercise for my own amusement...
I took a pretty extended hiatus due to a number of real life things that come up: moving, settling in, yard work, and other sundry tasks that make a man set aside his story. Well, I put the story aside but I didn't put the pen and notebook away. While I was making my contributions to our living arrangements and paying my sweat equity, I kept on plugging away at the story in the most low tech manner you can imagine: in a paper journal. Ostensibly, I was doing what needed doing around the house, but whenever an opportunity presented itself I kept working on the story: an hour waiting for a ride in a coffee shop or during lunch in the employee lounge at work, while waiting for the bus, or any other time I could squeeze in a few lines; or at least ponder the possibilities of the plot.
Then I figured out that I could do the same in a way that wouldn't require me to come back and transcribe my work into the computer: I started composing on my Android smart phone and tablet. With a little app called Diaro and a Dropbox account, I make a rough draft of my chapter on my phone and then upload the text file to my Dropbox cloud storage. Then it's a simple matter of opening the text file at home on my PC, copying the contents, and adding it to my novel file in WriteWay Pro -- bickety-bam, there's progress.
"Isn't typing on the phone's keyboard a pain in the ass?"
Hell yeah, it is! It took me a while to get used to it, and the stock Android keyboard was most definitely not to my liking, so I tried a few third party keyboards until I settled on GO Keyboard, and then I just had to keep at it until I got used to interface and got better at typing on a four and a quarter inch screen. My tablet is a better interface, much bigger screen, and it has a keyboard dock which is really nice -- attaching the tablet to the keyboard dock makes it into a netbook-sized portable that's nice to use in tight spaces. On the tablet, I prefer to use Google Docs (now Google Drive) because the word processor is robust enough for draft work.
"How stable and secure is this method?"
*Shrugs* I have no idea... I haven't had anything catastrophic happen yet, and hopefully I never will. (I'm knocking on wood, as I type... I'm THAT superstitious) I really want to get the draft of this novel done by September, so that I can work on the next one during NaNoWriMo in November (only six months away). In order to keep up my pace I'm going to continue to use my phone and tablet to advance my work on the story. It's possible that I could lose my phone or my tablet or both (I'd lose my head if it wasn't securely attached to the rest of me); just as it's possible that all of my electronic devices could crap out on me. Redundancy? P'shaw! I back up my work on a portable hard drive, and I guess I could upload a copy to cloud storage... but in this hypothetical, I'd be f*ck out of luck if my electronics all decided to die on me at once. Let's keep our fingers crossed that none of that shit happens.
I'm no bestselling author... hell, I'm not even a published author... so the idea of a high end data vault is beyond even a momentary consideration. There is a moral to this story, kiddies, and it's this: hit save often and make copies of your files. Pretty easy, right?
BTW: you may have noticed the snazzy word counter I added to the site; no, I'm no programming genius... believe me -- I can't code myself out of a paper bag. Fortunately for me there's folks out there who not only make neat-o gadgets like this, but they share them. Want one for your site? or just want to give the makers of this counter some love and support? Go here: http://www.writertopia.com/toolbox/meters Thank you, Writertopia!!!
I took a pretty extended hiatus due to a number of real life things that come up: moving, settling in, yard work, and other sundry tasks that make a man set aside his story. Well, I put the story aside but I didn't put the pen and notebook away. While I was making my contributions to our living arrangements and paying my sweat equity, I kept on plugging away at the story in the most low tech manner you can imagine: in a paper journal. Ostensibly, I was doing what needed doing around the house, but whenever an opportunity presented itself I kept working on the story: an hour waiting for a ride in a coffee shop or during lunch in the employee lounge at work, while waiting for the bus, or any other time I could squeeze in a few lines; or at least ponder the possibilities of the plot.
Then I figured out that I could do the same in a way that wouldn't require me to come back and transcribe my work into the computer: I started composing on my Android smart phone and tablet. With a little app called Diaro and a Dropbox account, I make a rough draft of my chapter on my phone and then upload the text file to my Dropbox cloud storage. Then it's a simple matter of opening the text file at home on my PC, copying the contents, and adding it to my novel file in WriteWay Pro -- bickety-bam, there's progress.
"Isn't typing on the phone's keyboard a pain in the ass?"
Hell yeah, it is! It took me a while to get used to it, and the stock Android keyboard was most definitely not to my liking, so I tried a few third party keyboards until I settled on GO Keyboard, and then I just had to keep at it until I got used to interface and got better at typing on a four and a quarter inch screen. My tablet is a better interface, much bigger screen, and it has a keyboard dock which is really nice -- attaching the tablet to the keyboard dock makes it into a netbook-sized portable that's nice to use in tight spaces. On the tablet, I prefer to use Google Docs (now Google Drive) because the word processor is robust enough for draft work.
"How stable and secure is this method?"
*Shrugs* I have no idea... I haven't had anything catastrophic happen yet, and hopefully I never will. (I'm knocking on wood, as I type... I'm THAT superstitious) I really want to get the draft of this novel done by September, so that I can work on the next one during NaNoWriMo in November (only six months away). In order to keep up my pace I'm going to continue to use my phone and tablet to advance my work on the story. It's possible that I could lose my phone or my tablet or both (I'd lose my head if it wasn't securely attached to the rest of me); just as it's possible that all of my electronic devices could crap out on me. Redundancy? P'shaw! I back up my work on a portable hard drive, and I guess I could upload a copy to cloud storage... but in this hypothetical, I'd be f*ck out of luck if my electronics all decided to die on me at once. Let's keep our fingers crossed that none of that shit happens.
I'm no bestselling author... hell, I'm not even a published author... so the idea of a high end data vault is beyond even a momentary consideration. There is a moral to this story, kiddies, and it's this: hit save often and make copies of your files. Pretty easy, right?
BTW: you may have noticed the snazzy word counter I added to the site; no, I'm no programming genius... believe me -- I can't code myself out of a paper bag. Fortunately for me there's folks out there who not only make neat-o gadgets like this, but they share them. Want one for your site? or just want to give the makers of this counter some love and support? Go here: http://www.writertopia.com/toolbox/meters Thank you, Writertopia!!!
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