Week One

Keyboarding properly might just kill me. The goal they set out is simple: 30wpm, no more than two errors.

I can do 55 or so a minute as shown with Hera (doing 10k words in three hours, my calculator tells me that’s only 55 a minute. Seriously?) But the errors, oh, the errors!

The instructor said in the past she has disabled the backspace key (oh… gods) but this year didn’t. To which my mind went YES! And then that little voice in the back of my head went, “how much faster can you write a book if you actually typed accurately?” To which I, being the proud writer that I am, threw them off a cliff.

And began taking the tests and doing the exercises without the use of the backspace.

The instructor has a point. When something is there, we rely on it to help us out, but we need to learn to do things when it’s not there. At the same time, the voice at the back of my mind has a point. My old laptop has one broken key. The backspace key. Yeah, I used it way too much.

The thing is. My fingers go, “we can be so much faster,” and I don’t have music to drown things out. The woman who sits next to me keyboards properly, learned it in high school and a lot more recently than I have. Her wpm are something like 35 and I can hear her typing and it’s like a drug or something.

Mm, give me some of that clickety-clack.

Then there’s a couple of issues. Stories on the go for writing? None… editing is Crop and Harvest, but I always have something writing. I’m still planning out the new Coffee and Blood trilogy. That should be enough. But it’s like I hear the clacking of keys and all my characters start jumping up and down and going, “me, me, me!”

And Shade, who I’m supposed to be using to practice good keyboarding? Well, he rolled over and went back to sleep in his cell. Thanks, Shade. I no longer feel bad about what I’m about to do to you. How do you become an immortal, feared monster hunter if you’re a lazy bum?

The issue I’m having seems to be that all my stories want some help, they want my attention thinking that I’m in between projects, and I’m not. The other issue is that every time a story pops up, the voice at the back of my mind immediately dismisses it because I don’t want to devote that kind of attention to the plot. I don’t think I could manage to pay so much attention. So there is Savage Shores, all… five? Of the D.o.t.A books I have planned out, two for Coffee and Blood planned out, even Shade.

But the only one that has stuck around and maybe I could work on is mainly erotica, working title Bound by Blood, a book I started working on three years ago and never finished because it wound up more novella length and I didn’t like that.

I need to figure this out because the stories have to stop bothering me. Without being able to write, which would distract me, I’ve been flickering between webpages and OneNote. I’m almost certain the person beside me has caught on and watches but all we’re learning this semester are things I have a basic understanding of. By doing the back and forth, I’m stopping myself from becoming frustrated or winding up in circles. If that happens, I’m going to start writing and that’s not great for me.

Besides keyboarding, the other thing I might have trouble with is Interpersonal Communication. Yeah, soft skills. Boo.

Work has also taught me this over the years. It basically amounts to customer service and not being a dick. Easy, right? Sort of…

I have training in interpersonal communication, in difficult conversations, training and retraining and all sorts. That doesn’t mean I’ve ever been comfortable with the level of talking I give others, if that makes sense. So, I could very much learn from this course but it’s main time is Friday afternoons. Day three of three long days and at two-thirty on Friday my brain completely checked out. I lost about twenty minutes of the lecture and only really came to as I was leaving and the instructor said goodbye and wished me a good weekend. She’s such a cheery woman that it stuck out.

I basically went to work and proceeded to beat my head on the wall because that is not how interpersonal communication works.

Do you want a good job, Aya? Because this is not how you get a good job.

Math, accounting, and writing round out the semester. Math I can do, it’s only covering twelve years of math in one semester, how hard could it be? It goes so far as fractions and long division, maybe some algebra I think he said. I can do that. I do that while at work to fill the time. Figure out total new income from raises, percentages on sales, and hours, etc.

I like math, I suppose is what I mean.

Accounting, work has also had me do. Not quite the way they’re teaching us, but I kind of have a basic understanding. I’ve also been doing this for my writing but it seems not quite correctly. Everything’s recorded, it’d just be hell to go through for any poor soul who has to audit me. So I’m going to start doing that properly which is great practice for accounting.

Oh, and computer skills. I apparently skimmed over what the first chapter said. Stupid. Once I hit the questions, I knew I had a problem so I need to review it again.

For homework, I’ve done most of it on breaks or between school and work. But those periods were actually reserved for self-review last week. I went over extra information. Going through chapters and writing up notes on it, reading old notes, doing exercises. Whatever I can do to stay on top.

They told us several times that in the end your grades don’t matter and I fully understand and believe that. I could probably pass on what I know already, but then why even bother taking the semester? If I can refine skills I already have, I would be very happy. And for some reason I can’t just leave off at what the instructor gives us. I need to know I have an understanding of the information before me. It’s been that way for years.

Maybe because work has, for years, thrown new information at me and had me train others. After so long it’s almost impossible to just leave off. So I’m making more work for myself now, but I also feel a little more confident in my skills which means less nerves and the ability to pay attention more because I’m not concerned with that failing grade. I’ve only ever received below 60% on one course so… I mean, statistically it’s almost impossible for me to fail.

That doesn’t mean I’m just going to lean back and laze through the semester though.

My notes are going through OneNote, which has been fabulous so far. I access it on my phone, on my computers, and all the rest. Because I do most of the notes on my laptop, I don’t have to worry about a connection to the internet to access them when I’m out and about. Typically I am accessing them on the  laptop.

The only issue I have is writing. She wants us to hand write/print it all. No computers. Me and my arthritis are not pleased but I get that we do need practice hand writing things because we will have to write notes. With those, I simply take pictures at the end of class and upload them to OneNote.

Tada. All my things on one place and organized by subject, then by date/chapter. Gone are the days of flipping through things searching for something specific and I love it to bits. I’m sure there are other programs that do the same, it’s the concept I love, I’ve wanted that inter-connectivity since being in high school and losing my first usb drive. I still have to back up onto drives because clouds could vanish or be hacked. I’m just not worth the effort of trying to get in there, so… so far I’ll be fine.

The only issue I really have is wanting to quit work. I want my work and income to be purely from writing but it definitely does not offer enough to do that.

Suppose this is where I put on the weepy author eyes and say, “please buy my books and leave a nice review when you’re done.” but I’m sure it will come with due time. For now, I have to accept the situation I’m in.

Unless I can buy the winning lottery ticket, but I’m not spending money on that without some kind of incentive.