Half an Inch

Last night I really enjoyed writing. I wrote a few hundred words over my 2026 goal for the day. I am still working on a short story that has now gone beyond 21,000 words and is 74 pages long. It’s still not done either. I figure there might be another 5,000 to 10,000 words left in the story. It’s hard to say because who knows how it’s going to end? Not me. Although I am starting to get an inkling.

Last night's writing was all about the big fight sequence between human men and a race of being called Oysters. At least the humans call them that. I had fun imagining the sequence and came up with some ideas about where the story was going in that series of events. Fight sequences are a great place to kill off some characters the reader may have fallen in love with. When you gotta go, you gotta go!

The words flew out the tips of my fingers effortlessly. A sure sign that I was in a full flow state.

I printed out the new pages and added them to the other pages, and was surprised to see the manuscript was about half an inch thick. I seem to have left “short story” territory with this one. Maybe in Novella land.

There may be some sequences that need deleting or reworking. I am particularly interested in reading the parts I dictated. Will they still hold up?

I tend to be what is called an additive writer, meaning I need to go back through and add sensory details and emotional details to help flesh out the narrative. I’ll do that after I’ve finished the story.

It’s Saturday, so we had a lazy day watching a German Netflix series called ‘Familiar’. So far, it’s been very entertaining and has had some good twists to the story. The lighting, or maybe it’s just the color grading makes it feel a bit depressing. Not sure if that is a German TV thing, I’m looking at you DARK, or is it the new stylistic thing people are into these days?

I did a bit more work studying Sales Copy for book publishing and handed in my assignment for that class. There aren’t many good examples from first-time writers who are self-promoting. Once you have had some sales or been on a list or won some awards, it becomes easier. New York Times Bestseller, Hugo Award Winner. 

But when you don’t have any accolades, it takes a bit more creativity to make yourself sound like your work is worth the purchase price. It was a challenge to come up with something that didn’t sound ridiculous. It’s the writer’s paradox; we can make stuff up all day unless it's about ourselves.

My wife is watching a movie downstairs with my stepson. We learned he hadn’t ever watched “The Usual Suspects”. He’s in a film and editing course, and we thought it was a crime he’s never had the pleasure. Corey, we’d like to introduce you to Kaiser Souzai.

I’m not sure why, but recently I have been watching Caesar Millan do his do whispering thing on YouTube. I don’t even want a dog, but there is something about his understanding of their psychology that I find fascinating. I repeat, in case any of my family members are reading this (almost zero chance of that! Haha), I do not want a dog, or dogs. It’s amazing how many of the problem dogs turn out to be problem dog owners. Not that any of them are cruel. But it is often, not always, but many times their behaviour and lack of understanding about dogs in general that has caused the problem.

Repeat: Do not want a dog.

Moving on, I ordered another charging base for my Happiness Smart Mug because I enjoy using it every day. My tea and coffee have been the perfect temperature for every single sip. Gone are the days of a tepid brew. Since I will travel to the animation studio again in a few weeks, it seemed like a good idea to have a charger base there as well. And when it’s not needed at work, it can go downstairs into my writing cave.

I’m still using the cave to do most of my writing and all my dictation. More practice is still needed. And it’s not like I expect to never type on a keyboard ever again. This blog was typed on my laptop while sitting up in bed. I have found it useful to write my blog posts using dictation. It means I’ll have an almost daily dictation practice routine, as I haven’t broken my blogging streak in just over four months.

It’s been extremely cold in this part of Ontario for the last few weeks. The thermometer is sitting around -16 C, and it is supposed to drop even further as the night goes on to -20 C and feel like its -29 C. going to be a chilly night.

I saw a furnace repair truck in my neighbour’s driveway today. Bad day to have HVAC issues. I didn’t venture outside today, even though they may ask for my Canadian card back. Some days were just made for drinking tea and curling up with a good book or some tv.

Earlier I had to search some notes I’d taken for a writing class from a previous year. I decided when I first started taking writing classes that I would handwrite the notes on my iPad. So, I chose an affordable program called Nebo. It auto recognizes a user’s handwriting and converts it on the fly as text. It keeps the handwriting on the screen, but there is a little text box showing you what it thinks you wrote. 

You can then either export the note as text or leave as is. A nice feature it has is searchable text. So today, I searched for a term I was studying, and it brought up all the handwritten documents where that word was mentioned. It makes for a great way to retrieve information while keeping the learning benefits that come from writing things by hand.

Isn’t technology wonderful?

I am using things like Word’s cloud service more and more these days. I find I am bouncing between multiple devices and saving to the cloud is just more convenient than copying files over. There is also the ability to go back in time to earlier versions of your work, which occasionally comes in handy. The downside is the possibility of data breaches and theft. But for now, I am not too concerned about that. I know well-known authors like John Grisham work on offline computers only. There is a massive financial risk if their next novel is released onto the net or stolen.

These days I am using a desktop PC, a laptop, my iPhone and soon the BYOK will also be in the mix. The more a file can jump seamlessly between all these devices, the more writing I can get done in a day.