Thursday, April 7, 2011

April Madness Update

So far I'm actually managing to write every day, just as I vowed for April. On two occasions it's been less than a page, with me just sitting down at the keyboard to pound out a few paragraphs or a snatch of dialogue before bed so I don't break my streak.

Thing is, I feel like that's more worthwhile than it sounds on the surface. It keeps the manuscript at the front of my mind, keeps my focus on what needs to happen in the NEXT few paragraphs or pages. And it reinforces my commitment to myself to be a writer producing new work even without the immediate pressure of a contract and deadlines.

I'm still playing with the Dragon software. This weekend I really need to sit down with the manual and figure out how to train my Dragon, though. I'm getting sick of its persistence in typing "Lassie" and "Klansmen" when the lassie in question is a girl, not a collie, and the clansmen are a good 60-70 years too early and on the wrong side of the ocean to be committing racist atrocities while garbed in white sheets. Oh, and when I worked on a to-do list, it kept typing "right" when I wanted "write" no matter how many times I said "show recognition window" and chose the latter from the options presented.

And don't even get me started on the Dragon's problems with capitalizing dialogue tags when the speech being tagged ends with a question mark or exclamation point.

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