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Oct. 16th, 2008 11:03 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
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HELLO THERE LOVELIES ♥
I need a bit of moral support right now, because I'm apparently completely useless figuring this out on my own.
It's the age old question; to handwrite or type?
The only thing that puts a spin on my situation is my job. I work from 8pm-4:30am at a ~CALL CENTER~. So, 8-12 we're normal busy but. . . those last four hours? Effing dead. Up to 10 minutes in between calls but it's not like I can have my laptop out but I feel like I'm wasting time if i'm not writing. :|
So um. If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions or other handwrite/not-handwrite struggle stories, speak up!
I need a bit of moral support right now, because I'm apparently completely useless figuring this out on my own.
It's the age old question; to handwrite or type?
The only thing that puts a spin on my situation is my job. I work from 8pm-4:30am at a ~CALL CENTER~. So, 8-12 we're normal busy but. . . those last four hours? Effing dead. Up to 10 minutes in between calls but it's not like I can have my laptop out but I feel like I'm wasting time if i'm not writing. :|
So um. If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions or other handwrite/not-handwrite struggle stories, speak up!
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Date: 2008-10-17 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-10-17 05:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 05:35 am (UTC)Luckily, now that I'm in college, I have a lot more free time than class time, so I'll be writing solely via computer this year (at least I plan to.)
My advice: handwrite whenever you can't get to a computer, and type it up as soon as you can. You can even print out what you've already written so that you can keep track of where you are when you're writing by hand. Esp. if you don't want to write out all 50,000 words AND type them. Because you are correct...wasting those ten minute intervals would be a shame.
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Date: 2008-10-17 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-10-17 08:12 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-10-17 10:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 01:48 pm (UTC)You can go to the site and on the right hand side there is a generator. You can put in how many words you hand wrote, hit the button and it takes you to a page with that many words all in latin from where the text where lorem ipsum comes from. Its pretty neat, and a lot fast than crtl+v over and over again. =)
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Date: 2008-10-17 11:16 am (UTC)Problem - slightly exensive, but my handwriting is so utterly atrocious that if I were to han write any of it, I'D not be able to read it when it came to typing up, never mind anybody else.
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Date: 2008-10-17 12:12 pm (UTC)you can also get an older model alphasmart on ebay for pretty cheap ($50 or less). it would be less conspicuous on your desk than a laptop.
if these are not valid options i would definately hand write, just so that you feel you aren't totally wasting your time. i would count words as you go along (page by page or something), and depending on your personal time constraints you could type it later or even type it after nano if things are hectic.
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Date: 2008-10-17 01:31 pm (UTC)Just my thoughts...
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Date: 2008-10-17 01:41 pm (UTC)If you can type, I would type while at work. Fortunately for me, I also have spans of downtime between blueprints being plotted out. Normally, I could open the files, hit the plot button and wait for them all to be done, but we have an OLD plotter, and it can handle no more than one file at a time with up to 4 copies, or 4 files with one copy. No variations or it gets confused lol....also, its a slow plotter. So I write while I'm waiting to start the next batch.
I also hand write while I'm at work. Sometimes, I can't get out what I want to say without seeing the flow of ink from a pen and writing more slowly allows me to grasp what's going on. Its only a paragraph or so, then its back to the computer. When handwriting, to make counting words easier, I count the line and write the total words in that line on the margin. Later, I'll go back and add the total of the all the lines on one page, using that line count and write the word count of the page in the header and circle it.
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Date: 2008-10-17 02:04 pm (UTC)Peace, Love, and Giggles,
Deanna
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Date: 2008-10-17 03:04 pm (UTC)a. Scan your work and either keep the picture file or the 'interpreted' text file - if you have clear handwriting the programs that convert scanned images to text usually work alright - not great but alright. At least you will have something to refer to, and something to plug in for getting your official word count.
b. Have a look at digital pens. Some of them are expensive, some of them aren't too bad. I believe I saw a starter set at Zellers for about 60-70$ The ability of these things to read handwriting is a bit better than the standard software you get with a scanner, but still not perfect. It will save your handwriting as a picture as well.
handwriting vs typing
Date: 2008-10-17 03:16 pm (UTC)Of course I don't know exactly what your budget is, but mics can be got quite cheaply and the software is available at a computer shop lie PC World or something like that. I'm going to have a look and see if there's any freeware dictation software for download online.
All the best
Seraph
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Date: 2008-10-17 03:30 pm (UTC)This has really helped me because I have a problem editing as I type. I am able to flush out the story better on paper because I don't think about making everything perfect. I don't pause. I just write what I see. I can't do this on the computer. It might sound starnge but when I'm typing on the computer I feel like it's somehow final and I don't want to make mistakes and so I'm constantly editing and correction punctuation and spelling and I loose a lot of the spark of the story.
Hope that helps.
-e.j.
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Date: 2008-10-17 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-18 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
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