Tag: AlphaSmart

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Word Count Goal

A thousand words of the saga per day.  That’s the personal, ongoing goal I’ve set for myself in writing the Blue Daunia series.  I usually hit it.  Hell, I actually usually exceed it!  Rare indeed are the days I fail to meet my goal.

I thought today might be one of those rare days.  Spoiler alert:  it wasn’t; I made it.  Exceeded it, actually.  But it was certainly no thanks to my good friend James.

A bit of background:  James is very good when it comes to the technical aspects of computers.  He knows his networking, is fairly proficient in making machines do what he wants them to do, and has even worked for a fairly major networking specialist company.

So anyway, I headed to a famous coffee shop around 6pm, ready to “clock in” and get to work toward my 1,000 word goal.  James would be joining me shortly, as he often does, with his laptop and his big ol’ book on some sort of programming language he’s trying to learn. . . phpBB+ Omega Beta or something (is that a thing?).  I don’t mind his company during my “work” nights, as he’s one of my longest-term friends and a decent fella to bounce ideas off of, and usually keeps to his own studies when I’m trying to lay the hammer down on some text.

At about 6:30, I’ve already gotten 200 words pounded out on my AlphaSmart Neo2 when James saunters in, his trusty laptop bag on his shoulder.  He plunks it down on the table and hits the line to order his drink (I’ve already settled in with my iced black tea with mango).

At 220 words, James is back at the table, pulling the PhpBbPbPBp book and the laptop from the bag.  He goes to hook the power brick to the laptop and plug it into an outlet, when he realizes that the back left part of the black plastic chassis is cracked, and although this is where the brick attaches to the computer, that particular connection still feels firm.  Nonetheless, the little orange charging light won’t light up, and on the screen the little lightning bolt is failing to appear over the tiny image of a battery.

I’m a decently resourceful fellow, so I pinch the chassis firmly together and offer a “now try it.”  No dice.  Not charging.  “Let’s try a different outlet”. . . or two, or hey, five.  It’s a no-go.  This thing has just had it, with the indicator suggesting that there is only an hour and a half of battery life remaining before shutdown (and we all know how that goes).

James whips out his smartphone and quickly checks his checking and savings account levels.  “Son of a bitch,” he says.  “Oh well. . . feel like riding around with me to a few places and shopping for a laptop?”  He has determined that he can afford roughly $400 toward a new one, which he was going to get on Black Friday of this year anyway, as his current machine is over 3 years old (a veritable dinosaur in computer years).

“Sure,” I relent.  So much for my word goal for the day.

We hit Best Buy first.  He likes an Asus and a Dell he sees there, finding the Lenovos to be either too cheap or far too expensive, with no middle ground in evidence.  James is a bit picky when it comes to his laptops, as we all should be, so he wants to shop around.

We hit the interstate for a few miles and head for the area’s ritziest Wal-Mart.  I can practically feel my word goal vaporizing before my very eyes.  If you happen to find yourself at the Wal-Mart at the rich end of Montgomery, Alabama, and you are there for the purpose of searching for a laptop computer, I pray to God you have your heart set on an HP, because that’s exactly what you’re going to find there.  HP, HP, and other HPs.  There was one which seem to fit the bill, but it’s only 7:53, and there’s a Target right down the road.

Oh Target, you silly little creature.  For all your mouses (mice?) and memory cards and gig sticks and styluses and carry cases and screen protectors, you’ve only got two laptops for sale, haven’t you?  The one on clearance with the crushed and open box, and the one you’d have to skip two mortgage payments to purchase.  James reluctantly picks one, though:  the Dell we saw at Best Buy, that very first place we went to. . . the place that was right across the street from the famous coffeehouse.  8:27pm at this point, and Best Buy closes at 9.

Word goal?  What word goal?

We hit Best Buy for the second time at 8:42. . . just enough time for absolutely no one to offer to help us.  I’m going to jump ahead ten minutes here, because it basically amounts to us having to flag someone down with flare guns and whistles.  At 8:59, we’re out the door and heading back across the street.  That particular location of the coffeehouse closes at 10, so that gives us an hour for James to get his new machine set up and running and for me to try to hammer out a few more paragraphs.

Have you ever tried to get some writing done when a clumsy box and scraps of cardboard and twist-ties and plastic bags and pieces of foam of various sizes are bombarding the area within two feet of you?  Try it sometimes!  I humbly invite you to do so.  Or don’t. . . because neither did I!

The new machine is now sitting on the table before us, in all its Dell glory.  The power brick is firmly attached on the PC end.  Time for James to plug it into the outlet.  Nothing.  No orange charging light, no little blue ring around the power button, no magical first-time screen illumination. . . nothing.

It’s at this point that Tevaris, one of our favorite baristas, comes walking over.  “James, man. . . you havin’ any luck with that outlet?”

James:  “No, why?”

Tevaris:  “We think some sort of breaker got tripped.  None of these outlets are workin’.”

James:  “How many of them?”

Tevaris:  “NONE of the front-of-house outlets, man.”

James:  “For how long?”

Tevaris:  “Since this afternoon.”

Alrighty then.  Sometimes you just have to apply palm firmly to forehead, and while I cordially declined to do so, James obliged himself in earnest.

The next part of the plan involved driving BACK over to the ritzy end of town, where the ritzier Target and ritzier Wal-Mart were.  Our destination:  the ritzier famous coffeehouse, this one open until 11pm.  We arrived at 9:30.  James plugged both machines in, and immediately got the orange charging lights on both.  “Damnit” he hissed.

“Had you really rather they were both broken?”  I asked.

“Almost!” he replied.

For the next hour and a half, he fumbled around with setting up his new machine, which he decided he might as well keep, seeing as how he was in need of a new one anyway.  And for the next hour and a half, I hit somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,115 words.

The moral of this little tale:  never count your chickens if you don’t even have an outlet to plug your incubator into. . . or something.  Something about chickens, I’m almost sure of it.

Oh, That First Draft Magic! (pt 1)

“You are, at this moment, not unlike a god to your fiction.”

Anywhere.

That’s where your text can go in its early phases.

You haven’t published it yet.  You haven’t submitted an idea to anyone or anything official.  Your work, at this one shining moment in its history, is completely un-obligated, beholden to no one but yourself.  You’ve told a couple of close friends and family members about your overall story idea and a few of your characters, but even to these rare few people, the how’s and why’s and wherefore’s of your future masterpiece are totally unknown.  The surprise twists, obscure references, and homage character names are yours for the making, or not.  You are, at this moment, not unlike a god to your fiction.

Have you put yourself on a timeline yet?  Don’t.  I urge you not to rush it.  Not yet, anyway.  If you have never published anything before, and you are plotting out your outline or pounding away on your very first first draft, you might be eager to reach that magical day when you hit the submit button on Amazon or your chosen platform.  Seeing that future thumbnail of your cover and that product link on the world wide web with your name next to it might be the ultimate vision in your mind as you lay down to sleep each night. . . but hold off on saddling yourself with a “release date” in the early going.  Allow yourself the time to get into a rhythm.  Find out, as the days go by and turn into weeks, how much free time you are finding to write, and how much time you are actually allowing yourself to write.  Once you ease into an inevitable flow and strike that work/family/friends/writing balance, you will begin to see more clearly how many words you are comfortably capable of producing per session, and how many sessions per week you can sanely manage.

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What you see in the picture here is a collection of gadgets known as the AlphaSmart Neo, which I will be dedicating an entire post to pretty soon, because it deserves it.  I mention it because it allowed me to drag a reliable method of writing with me everywhere I went while I was working on the first draft of the first issue of Blue Daunia.  I didn’t always want to take my MacBook to work, or carry it to a coffeehouse or café if I had other errands to run before or afterwards (it gets hella-hot in the summer in Montgomery, AL, and leaving a MacBook in the car while you’re grocery shopping reserves you a special place in hell).

With the AlphaSmart with me on the go, and my computer always at the ready while at home, what I discovered was that I could easily find the time to churn out about 1500 to 2000 words per day, roughly five days a week.  This level of output, I found, would allow me ample time for my day-job as well as spending time with friends and family.  However, I only found this out after feeling out my schedule and seeing what worked for me.  It will be different for you.  It will be different for each and every person who sits down to tackle a writing project.

For some, it will be a matter of quality versus quantity, whereby they find that they can do 3000 words in a day but that their quality begins to suffer after roughly 1800. . . and that’s completely fine!  There is an old adage that, during the first draft, you should just write and write and write, disregarding quality for the sake of just getting the project written (the idea being that you can always edit and polish later).  This is true, to an extent, but it is my personal belief that, after a certain point in one’s attention span has been reached (or a certain level of mental fatigue), you shouldn’t keep blazing through your outline points if you honestly stopped “feelin’ it” half an hour ago.  There is a distinct difference between “editable quality” and “I’m basically just adding adjectives and adverbs to my outline at this point.”

So, find your rhythm. . . find your pace and your comfort level, and then, although some may tell you otherwise (writing advice is, after all, a matter of opinion), by all means, set yourself a first-draft completion date!  The purpose here is two-fold.  First, after you’ve determined how much you are comfortably capable of, a concrete date staring back at you on your computer wallpaper or fridge door will keep you motivated to maintain that pace.  It instills discipline.  Once you’ve found out what you can do, sure, you could shirk it one day for a few extra hours of Netflix or a roiling comments debate on Facebook, but couldn’t you be doing that on your own time?  Is it really helping you achieve a lifelong dream right now?  Secondly, it gives you enough of a sense of purpose to let others know that you are “on the clock.”  Once your friends and family know what you are up to, and you’ve worked out your schedule enough to let them know that there will still be time for them, they will understand that your writing time is just that, your writing time.  Treat it like a job at this point, but without the stress of a jerk boss or overly-gossipy co-workers.  Treat it like the best job in the world (because it is!), but a job nonetheless, and one which has to be undertaken just like any other job out there.  Would your day-job boss allow you to watch Netflix or browse Facebook on the clock?  Believe me, once you’ve met your quota for the day, you’re going to feel proud about it and enthusiastic for your next session.  Drop the ball one day (which I have been guilty of, a couple of times) and you’ll be surprised just how bummed you can feel about it, the dread of having to play catch-up, and how pessimistic about the whole project you can become (the only cure being the next successful session).

To Be Continued. . . .