Spring is coming!

  By 1pinkmonkey | March 6, 2011 - 2:24 pm | Kids, Personal, Writing, Writing
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The formatting is going ok. They are sure taking their time with it though. Logan finished, but with fewer than 5000 words I would expect him to be. Connor is still slogging along. He should finish this week.

My writing has been intermittent lately. Most of that is from learning to touch-type killed my speed. It is up to a reasonable point. Still slow but not annoyingly so.

I need to work on twins more. Chaining my muse to the desk hasn’t been working. They started carrying a cutting torch. I have several choices. I need to choose one soon. I have many ideas at work but minimal time to put them down. Early morning, I have time but I wake up slow. Evenings, I have time and ideas, the kids want attention constantly. I will come up with a compromise this week.

With spring on the way I had to get a backpack, hat and other misc gear. All on clearance so we got great deals.  So my secret is out. I like hiking and camping.

All for now. Later!

1PM

The timeyard grows full

  By 1pinkmonkey | February 27, 2011 - 4:32 pm | Kids, Personal, Writing
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Well it’s that time again. Another week gone to the great timeyard  in the sky.

My youngest son has dropped out of the editing. He would only work on his editing if I sat and watched him do it. So I’m not going to force him to do any more. He has no interest in the editing now. Maybe next year.

I need to go through the other 2 boys stories and reformatting them to standard manuscript submission guidelines. Then they’ll need to read them for story, flow and the higher level ideas.

My writing is moving slow. The whole learning to touch-type journey is proving to be more draining than I thought. I have not broken my chain for typing since I started. My writing chain is just a few links scattered randomly. I think switching to DVORAK at the same time is slowing me way down. That’s fine, I may as well learn a more ergonomic layout. As my speed improves I’ll get in more writing. 50 minuets to get my 500 words is frustrating, I know the speed will come. The work will be worth it in the end.

I’m also working on the blog move. There are more fields on the new site so I have to adapt the old to new. It’s not hard just tedious.

All for now. Later!

1PM

Long 2 weeks

  By 1pinkmonkey | February 18, 2011 - 11:20 pm | Kids, Personal, Writing, Writing
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It’s been a long 2 weeks at the day job. The time I was going to spend doing this post was spend behind the wheel. Maybe I should plan to post 8 plus days apart so I have the late built right in to the schedule. Enough of that. Onward.

The kids editing still isn’t all in the computer. My youngest son said “I’ve been distracted by the TV and stuff.” So I set him down at the computer and told him that there’s no TV until he’s done a couple pages. Wow look at him go, for a day or two then nothing. So now he has a quota of 2 pages a day that I’m shown before he can watch TV or play video games (I’m such a mean dad).

I’m at 100% of the keyboard learned with the DSK layout. Only 11 wpm currently, with a 5% error rate. Practice will improve that. I picked up a Microsoft Natural 4000 ergonomic keyboard last week. My IBM model M is great for 40ish wpm with 6 – 8 finger, not staying on the home row with excessive hand and arm movement. As I learn to touch-type I can feel strain from the higher resistance as well as the from angle I have my arms. So I got the MS Nat 4k. Nothing like the Kineses that Terry Goodkind uses. But that will come once the paying writing work justifies the expense.

I’ve been doing reasonably well with the writing each day. I’ve found that my best creative time is in the morning, before work. So if I have a long day at work and sleep late I don’t get any writing time. I need to chain the muse to the desk and make her work when I have time. It’s a matter of practice. So it boils down to time and patience. I’ll get there.

I have 1631 words in Snowflake step 4 now and it’s not done yet. A couple more sessions should finish that step.

All for now, Later!

1PM

Late!

  By 1pinkmonkey | February 5, 2011 - 4:56 am | Kids, Personal, Writing, Writing
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Well another week and I’m a day late.

The day job and my own procrastination are to blame. I got home late then relaxed for way too long.

So on the editing.

The boys finished with their edits. Two of them have the changes in the computer. The last one couldn’t use the computer as a punishment for 2 weeks so hasn’t been able to enter his changes. I’ll be unlocking his user account in the morning so he can get the edits entered. With any luck we’ll be able to print the stories out sometime this weekend. Then the fun begins. I’m still procrastinating on my work and have said I’d give a through review of someone’s 50K word story. So I’ll be doing that as well as getting my own butt into gear since ISBW, AiSFP and WE are all making me feel guilty that I am not working on my own stuff daily. So I need to set a word goal since the whole step a week plan isn’t working out at the moment. I think 500 words a day or so is a good place so start. No, the or so has to go. I will write 500 words a day starting tomorrow. There I said it now I have to do it or I’ll be lying.

All for now. Later!

1PM

Back at it!

  By 1pinkmonkey | January 27, 2011 - 11:14 pm | Personal, Writing
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Damn it’s 10:30 PM on Thursday. Well I’ll write and post this so I can go to bed.

On the editing front. The boys mostly finished a pass through each of their brothers stories. We’re still on punctuation and spelling currently. They can edit style and content when they’re entering the corrections for their story. Once the corrections are all entered we’ll print them out again. This pass they’ll have to work closely with a parent. This pass is reading their story and high-level editing with the parent of their choice.

Some will think I’m doing the editing backwards. For my kids if you make it easier with each pass they’re more willing to do it. The word count isn’t too  high either. Next year the stories that they churn out for NaNoWriMo will be much more coherent and they’ll be better at creating readable stories. One of them is showing a decided interest in graphic novels, just the art so far though. We’ll see how that gees as time moves on.

My work hasn’t been moving at all for 2 weeks. The rough plot has been in place and stewing for a couple of weeks. I haven’t felt the urge to go back through it another time so I think the bullet points of the general plot work. I need to move forward on expanding the outline. Parts of the Snowflake method will help me with that. The plot expanding ones mainly as my characters come alive as I write so I don’t want to have too much detail about them when I start. I can fill that in as I learn while writing the story.

All for now. Later!

1PM