On busted hands, writing with dictation, and trying not to get frustrated

NaNoWriMo Mania! Obsessing over your word count: Nerdy...

On busted hands, writing with dictation, and trying not to get frustrated

Well well well, have you missed me? This is the first personal posted I've had a chance to write in a while. So, to be clear, everything you see from the online, whether it's on Facebook, Twitter or here on the blog, I'm writing with the dictation program. I'm trying to proofread everything really well but if you do get strange typos, that's probably the reason.

For a while there, I was actually using the dictation program so much that, coupled with the cold I had, I lost my voice entirely. Not only was my voice raspy and the program couldn't understand it, but I kept coughing which made the voice program interpret those coughs as words. So, overall it's been a frustrating and discouraging last couple of weeks, but I'm remaining optimistic that we should have a solution soon.

My hands are still in a lot of pain, but I have been to see a hand specialist, finally. We still don't know exactly what's wrong and are still in the testing phase, but I should hopefully know what the problem is and have some sort of solution within the next three weeks.

I have to confess, I feel really crappy about the fact that I wasn't able to finish the draft of Mistress Novel before the end of October as I promised myself. I understand that there were extenuating circumstances, but I can't help but beat myself up over the fact that I didn't get it done. I guess the lesson is to work on stuff when you have the time and not rely on having time in the future, because you never really know what could happen. I'm really hoping that what we find a cure with the next three weeks and then maybe I can finish the editing while writing my NaNoWriMo novel. But at this point I've sort of resigned myself to the fact that I'm not going to be able to meet that goal.

I know, I know. They'll always be time in the future for me to finish. But I hate breaking promises to myself. It feels like there's always something.

I didn't mean for this post to sound discouraging. I actually felt pretty optimistic today because I retrained the dictation program and it was working really well again after not working last week. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't frustrated. I wrote out a timetable of everything that's happened with my hand for the hand specialist and was somewhat horrified to discover exactly how long this has been going on. I first hurt my hand at the end of June, which means we are approaching five months of not being able to use my hands normally. Somehow, just seeing it all written out like that made it that much worse.

I've been trying to focus on the fact that the most important thing is getting better. Obviously, being able to use my hands for the rest of my life is more important than anything I might have to do in the short-term. And while that philosophy is all well and good on a philosophical level, when the work piles up around me and I simply can't do it I find it impossible not to get bogged down by it.

I know you're probably sick of hearing about it. (Imagine living with me!) I haven't put updates about the situation on this blog for that very reason, I didn't want to sound like the all hand problems all the time channel. But, by the same token, I don't want everyone to think I'm ignoring them or being a slacker just for fun.

While I can definitely "write" faster with the dictation programs than I can type, I lose my voice faster than my hands get tired so I seem to be able to write less than I would be able to do if I was typing normally.

I apologize for the haphazard and disorganized flow of this post. Normally I would go back and rearrange everything so it made sense with editing, but revisions are really hard with the dictation program so you're stuck with the first draft version. But this was just a little update let you know that I'm alive and kicking and am more than just scheduled NaNoWriMo blog posts. :-)