Back to Basics

I've made enough of a fool of myself with the 2007 posts. You'd think I live in Florida if you think about my political perspective and ignore party politics. Well, I do and I can't.

Stop Press is associated with journalism, though, and journalism is associated with writing. I'll do my best this year to concentrate on writing. Can't make any promises, though, since this is an election year and I've chosen my candidate even though Florida wasn't allowed to see, hear, or actually vote on the candidates. What else is new?

I've just worn another letter off my keyboard during a writing challenge. You have no reason to know that I am very proud of wearing the letters off my keyboards. I've wiped out two on a PC and am working on my laptop now. I tell others who need to use my computer that it's a security measure. If you don't know the keyboard, you can't use my computer. That doesn't quite work when your IT guy is also a hunt and peck guy.

My current keyboard has pegged me as egotistical since the letter "I" disappeared before the letter "E." Losing the use of the Shift keys has told me several things. The first is that I should keep my fingernails short and hit the keys with the squat, fat pads of my fingers. Both Shift keys still have their arrows and all their letters. I hit them with the outside pads of my little fingers - at least I did when they worked. Now I hit them with a hammer or toggle the Caps Lock key instead.

I'm giving myself a handicap for WriLiMarCha (the Writing Life Marathon Challenge at iVillage.com). I can do that. The Writing Life is my message board there. (Where did my cursor go now? Hope the spellcheck will save me from having stray letters in my words.)

I'm still counting up my computerized and manual writing. Nearly three weeks of computer chaos put a crimp in my writing - and keyboard erasure. N, M, A, S, D, G, H, R, T, O, and U might survive another week or month or two. Mechanical pencils and a huge supply of pens and paper came to the rescue. Instead of the goal of 50,000 words (does that sound familiar to you writers?), I'll be lucky to end up with 35,000. Stuff happens, I guess.

The next trick will be to sell 250 or 1000 of those words. Hawking our writing is another post (or twelve) altogether.

I promise to be back in less than three or four months. Now that I know where I'm going, I can plot the path.