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12 Books in 12 Months

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Touch Typing

The other morning I forgot how to touch type. I don’t know if it was down to tiredness, or lack of concentration, or perhaps a touch of mild bubonic plague; but whatever it was I was coming out with endless streams of jumbled consonants.  In the end I had to start watching what my fingers were doing on the keyboard in order to get coherent sentences out of them.  Best administrative assistant / writer evar.

Any person who has tried to write 2000 words of fiction every day over a sustained period of time will already know that touch typing is A Good Thing.  It means you can get lost in the words, letting them fall out of your brain and onto the screen in record time without breaking your concentration to remind your left index finger where the ‘f’ key is (which defies logic as it is – the ‘f’ key doesn’t have that bump on it for decoration, brain, it’s there so you can find it without looking).

Probably the worst thing you can possibly do in a ‘forgetting how to type’ situation is ironically most people’s default position, namely to overthink it.  If you go ‘oh, I’ve made more mistakes than usual, what’s going on there?’ you start to come up with outlandish ways to explain your ineptitude, which then gets progressively worse because you’ve been dwelling on it rather than getting on with what you’re meant to be doing.

I suspect if you didn’t pay any attention at all you’d probably work it out of your system naturally, and as long as you proof read your correspondence with due diligence no one need ever be any the wiser.  Although I don’t know that for sure, because I fall into the ‘noticing and wondering what’s the matter with me’ camp rather than the blitz era carrying on regardless group.

And this, dear reader, is what is known as a First World Problem – I gather there are some people out there who don’t even have any hands. Touch typing is but a distant dream for those brave souls and yet they struggle on.  Presumably they dictate their novels to a secretary, or upload them directly to Audioboo.

Verily, this is food for thought.

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Writing Competition

The Guardian books blog has brought some pretty good things to my attention of late, not least the Mills and Boon New Voices competition.   The winner could well go on to literary stardom, or at least romance publication; and everyone who enters is given feedback on their first chapter – as Alison Flood discovered.

My first thought on reading this was to submit the first chapter of last year’s NaNoWriMo effort, which started life as an affectionate M&B parody.  But it was a short-lived thought, which lasted approximately up until the point where I re-read the thing.  The Single Mum’s Aristocratic Library Assistant has many fine qualities, but it is not stylistically appropriate for this contest.  I have copied and pasted below with a couple of minor edits so you can see what I mean…

Continue reading “Writing Competition” →

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The Great Kindle Challenge: Day 12

For those who are new to The Great Kindle Challenge, I thought I would give a quick overview of how it all began before drawing my inevitable conclusions.  Most of this is copied and pasted from Wikipedia, as you can probably tell.

Background

Once Upon A Time there was an eccentric gent who went by the name of Professor Amazon.  Like all unusual academics, he was the owner of an enormous raggle taggle white beard, and his moustache was a champion of the genre.  He wore spectacles, because genius tends to make one’s eyes a little weak, and was generally to be seen sporting the very latest in holey old jeans and slightly less holey jumpers.

Professor Amazon was the older brother of a younger sister, whose was called Praline Amazon because their parents were having an off day when they named her.  Praline had spent most of her life working very hard to show the world that she was more than just a silly name, and she founded an internet business that you may have heard of – it was called Amazon.

One day, Praline called her brother on the telephone and said to him, “Professor Amazon, I want you to invent me a thing.” Continue reading “The Great Kindle Challenge: Day 12” →

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Society of Authors Conference

Today the Society of Authors are holding a conference in Edinburgh. I am not at it, but have been following the live tweets from Colin Fraser of Anon Poetry with interest this morning. And that got me to thinking, perhaps other people would be interested in following the conference today. And then I thought thanks to Phyllis of The Edinburgh Reporter, I have the technology to help people out with that. So I’ve set up a real-time feed for you.

Unfortunately Word Press won’t let me embed it on the page, but if you click the link below it will open in a new window.

Click Here

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The Great Kindle Challenge: Day 11

My own conclusions will be forthcoming in a post tomorrow, but in the meantime why not watch this video for Alan Partridge’s views on the kindle. He’s on Twitter now, too. ( @ThisIsPartridge )

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The Great Kindle Challenge: Day 10

A couple of days ago I was linked to an article in The Economist suggesting that soon people will stop using shelves for books and adorn them exclusively with knick knacks, much like that old lady you used to know who kept a faux-mahogany sitting room for special occasions (like drinking chintz out of the posh tea set).  The blame for this lies squarely at the feet of ePublishing and the kindle and will lead to seven plagues and the death of literacy.  Or something.

The article touches on the matter of eBook piracy, which is a very touchy subject and is often tagged onto the End of Publishing debate without much explanation.  I’ve read articles by a few authors saying it is A Very Bad Thing, and still more articles by different authors saying that actually it can raise your profile and boost sales.  A summary googling of the topic came up with piracy articles dating back over several years, which I shall now bullet point for your indifference: Continue reading “The Great Kindle Challenge: Day 10” →

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