Kat Dancing

While I am searching for a job while I'm in Canada, I have only meager hopes of finding one... which, since I go bonkers without work, was a good reason to bring my own. Before the summer's over - hopefully well before - I will have the novel in good enough shape to submit to publishers.

I intended to wait a bit longer, but the going bonkers stage started much earlier than expected, so I started yesterday. And, yes, I will be doing a lot of progress posts. I know they're dull, but it helps me to go over what I've done. Besides, thanks to Damned Dvorak, I need the typing practice. If I'm this slow when I go to type all these changes in I really *will* go bonkers.



Revision Progress: 6 pages (out of 337)
Changes: Decided that the opening epigraph needed to be from Nick's point of view, since all the others are. Found places to add description, since the beta readers are in agreement that there's not enough (read: any) description. Made description of people moving in freefall more realistic.
Up Next: Figure out some way to deal with the subs issue.

Let's see:

I'm in Canada. Again. Looking for a job. Again. In general I'm happy about that, and the bits that are icky aren't anyone's fault and don't bear repeating.

What I will bitch about is Dvorak. See, I have bad wrists. Not terrible, but I get regular flare-ups, and ergonomic keyboards and such have only helped a little. The glory blaze of Finishing The Novel caused another bad spell. And now I'm in Canada and between projects and I have loads of spare time and everyone keeps saying Dvorak is the only way short of surgery to deal with carpal tunnel, and I thought, fuck it. No time like the present, right?

It's day three.

I am in hell.

For those who don't know, Dvorak is an alternate keyboard layout, much more natural than Qwerty (which was developed to slow typists down so they didn't jam the typewriter). So switching means relearning how to type.

I've gone from typing 65 words per minute to 15.

I CAN TYPE FASTER THAN THIS WITH ONE HAND TIED. No. Really. Hunt-and-peck would be faster. I LIVE on this fucking machine. This is *crippling*. Right now, if I was offered the choice between loosing the power of speech and this, I wouldn't even hesitate. It'd be "Tell my family I love them and pass the tongue snips."

*pounds head on keyboard*

They say it gets better soon. I hope they're right. Otherwise I'm gonna loose a lot of expensive electronics when I finally crack.

Nicked from Gord:

You Are 40% Normal (Somewhat Normal)

While some of your behavior is quite normal... Other things you do are downright strange You've got a little of your freak going on But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself

... okay, that's pretty accurate.

Did I say real postage soon? Let me redefine "soon"....

A meme I nicked from Gord.

Your brain: 160% interpersonal, 40% visual, 120% verbal, and 80% mathematical!

Congratulations on being 400% smart! Actually, on my test, everyone is. The above score breaks down what kind of thinking you most enjoy doing. A score above 100% means you use that kind of thinking more than average, and a score below 100% means you use it less. It says nothing about how good you are at any one, just how interested you are in each, relatively. A substantial difference in scores between two people means, conclusively, that they are different kinds of thinkers. Matching Summary: Each of us has different tastes. Still, I offer the following advice, which I think is obvious: Don't date someone if your interpersonal percentages differ by more than 80%. Don't be friends with someone if your verbal percentages differ by more than 100%. Don't have sex with someone if their math percentage is over 200%.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 97% on interpersonal You scored higher than 50% on visual You scored higher than 89% on verbal You scored higher than 64% on mathematical

Link: The 4-Variable IQ Test written by chriscoyne on Ok Cupid

Actually pretty accurate, as long as we're not tracking interpersonal skills. Those, I pretty much suck at.

Real postage soon, I promise.

Appealling to people's better natures time.

Some of you know Holly Lisle's writing already. I do; I've always enjoyed it. She's a good writer with a good sense of humor and that ability to make me laugh, cry, and fight with a character that so few possess.

She's also the creator of Forward Motion, the main writing community I hang out at. She's written a lot of articles about writing; some of the best information I have - particularly on the business end of things - came from Holly. She put a lot of time into "paying it forward" for young writers, and I'm infinitely grateful to her.

Unfortunately it's not a good time out there for young writers or old ones, and Holly, like a lot of people, is struggling to get by. Basically whether or not she'll get a contract for her next book - and, by extension, whether or not she'll be able to keep writing as herself or abandon her name and backlist and start from scratch - depends on presales of her current book.

Yup. Not sales. Presales.

Nope, I don't think it's fair either.

This is the first chapter of that book. Holly describes it as "romantic intrigue"; I think it looks like a hell of a lot of fun, personally, and great stuff for a mystery fan like me. Read it. If you think you'd buy it, do yourself and Holly a favor and put in a preorder at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. Or your local bookstore. Whatever.

Who knows? It might help.