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My Adventures on WDC both funny and serious. I store Items and tid bits I learn here. |
| My Second Blog since I joined the site. |
You know life has some of us down and sometimes we have to fight depression as well besides learning to live with disabilities. I will not bore you to death with my list of disabilities. I have enough to know what everyone is going through. I also know that because we have them they can give us a great advantage. I in my youth from reading sci-fi in my jr. high school library fell in love with computers. They were still as big as a house and running on tubes. I was taking Electronics and fixing the old tube type television. When Bite Magazine featured a 8080 Intel processor based home computer. I bought all the components and hand wired that computer from scratch. My only problem was it had no Bios (Basic in and out system.) Then next month’s magazine featured one complete with the code and a machine to burn the code into an eeprom. (Electronically erasable/programmable read only memory.) It is a chip you can change and plug into a socket on my hand wired mother board. Because I did this it shaped what I was going to do professionally. I repaired computers for over forty major manufacturers. I did printers, monitors, and networking equipment along with the tower computers. I made good money doing this until Agent Orange showed its ugly head in my life. It made doing house calls and working in tight places no longer an option. I am very limited on walking so I am forced to use a wheel chair now. I still refuse to get an electric one because I know if I ever do I will never walk again. I like walking into a bathroom to go potty. Strange I know, but then I don’t like needles so getting a catheter is not an option. Or using any of the other methods is not in my future. I will keep on fighting to walk as long as I can. I’ll bet your wonder why I am telling you all of this. The reason is background so you can know where I am coming from when I say these are my reasons that I enjoy writing. I just learned to my amusement I am a 65 year old Geek. I have forgotten more about computers than the kids fresh out of college know about them. Now, this makes writing on a computer so much easier for me than most of people that are my age. I don’t have to depend on my children for help and to fix my computers. It is the other way around they always have me fix their machines when they break them. I find this very amusing I have seen the elderly held hostage to their kids or to a very expensive repairman. I just build my own so I do not have store issues or warranty issues. This has set me free to write any time I like, any place I like, and since I own two laptops beside a huge gaming tower. My only issue is keeping all my writing together when I am forced to write with one of the laptops like right now. The good news is because of my disabilities they have enabled me to write anytime I want and anywhere. Because I picked a large project as my first project of my newbie writing career a nine book series. I still to this day don’t know why my muse decided to do this. I can tell you the benefits of it so far. I wrote the first book then I joined writing.com to get help fixing my very first attempt at writing. Because of it I have learned so much and in return helped so many other writers. It is wonderful to be able to live in my created universe every day instead of being forced to hold a job, and try and make a living with my handicaps. The writing is my job and I hope to make it my new profession. Yes, I live with pain everyday from the swelling against my pressure wraps and I refuse to take drugs that will make me a drug addict for the pain. I use the pain to enable me to write. I am hoping to start trying to get my first book of the series published this year. I am finally feeling good about it every time I read it through as I edit it for grammar and typos. I am to the point I am taking things out and making it read faster and keeping things consistent. I make my disabilities enable me so I can write when the muse hits me like right now. Every one of us is different we all have different trials to overcome. I’m just saying once you find your writing project. Make your challenge in life enable you to work on your project instead of allowing it to disable you from what you love. It took me a while to realize that my ability to repair computers enabled me to write and keep my writing organized. Next, if I am forced to sit down a lot why not in front of a computer adding a new chapter to a book or doing a review or helping another author with Writing ML. Or if nothing else doing research for a story idea and taking classes to improve my writing. |
| Today I learned that I have a lot still to learn about my new profession that of writing. After I posted this see below: "You know as we all age the bedtimes get earlier and the night time gets shorter go figure! Me I stay up until one or two am then sleep until 8:30 am. Then I do it all over again, but I have to admit I do fall asleep at the keyboard a lot. The family just points out that I have key cap checkerboard squares on my forehead again. I have to admit my new keyboard is comfy to sleep on." I realized that I was trying to explain why if it says I'm online here, but I fail to respond to a post or notice, you can bet I fell asleep on the keyboard. Now you know the real truth. It is a really good thing they don't have raised letters on my keycaps.I just imagine what might get spelled out as I roll around on my keyboard. Now this new keyboard I have now is not a normal keyboard. It is a backlit low profile gaming keyboard. I just hated all those cheep keyboards that the numbers and letter wear off. With this keyboard they are lit so are a part of the plastic of the keycaps. They are never going to wear out. I don't know about the lights however, but then I couldn't care less it has three colors that I can switch out. So if one dies I can just trigger the next color. I paid a little bit more then the $5.00 Keyboards I have been buying in the past. So far I have actually done 20 short stories, 42 chapters to book 7, and who knows how many emails with 3 newsletters. So far it is by far the best keyboard I have yet purchased. For a gaming keyboard It doesn't get much use because the games I play is mostly done with the mouse. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** The Run-on King PDG Member ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| Wow, look at all the writers writing their hearts out, twenty-five have won nano and yet they are still going strong. I really understand just how hard it is to work on a book. This year I vowed I was going to Win Nano! During my journey I had to jump these hurdles. Day one: Umm when do we start writing? Oh, yea, today! Lets get going. Wrote and edited the new chapter 1 (I could have written chapter two as well if I didn't stop to edit.) Day two: I just squeaked by with 2,300 words before midnight Yea. Oh crap its before midnight in my area but I'm over two hours on the east coast. Late again. Wrote chapter 2 Day three: I have to redo my starting. All that work down the tubes. Wait a minute lets not get so depressed so quickly. If I write the stories of two of the biggest, badest, Empire warships. I can use them as individual chapters and tease the reader with monster ships the size of a large moon and its carrier ship the size of a large planet. It even has its own atmosphere. What if it was populated with its crew on the surface. I like this new idea, but how do I tie it all in with the real story. Day four: Finished both stories and turned in the word count. Ah ha, what if I start the third chapter with them all as a whole solar system with the Biggest ships the Dreadnoughts having ten of them parked in an orbit around a sun called Klark. And it is a trap to lure the enemy feeding waves in to attack the teaming surfaces of the ten Dreadnoughts full of eatable life. Their orders were to sleep in status until attacked by the enemy. How about we crash our main character on the third planet called Klarkston. Now I have the third chapter done. Day five: Added the few extra words needed to carry over from chapter three into the new renumbered chapter four. Day six: Added Chapter five and chapter six to the growing novel. Day seven: Added Chapter seven and eight to the novel Day eight: Felt like crap I only wrote half of Chapter 9 and gave up started playing Diablo 3 to calm my mind. Decided since it was close to the weekend I needed a break watched movies and earned 12 more para levels on my D3 witch doctor. Day nine: I am still playing games. Got bored with D3 went back and finished Chapter nine. Forgot to save it and lost all that work went back to playing D3. Day ten: Remembered the plot and dialog for chapter nine rewrote it one more time saved it in three different places this time. Day eleven: started writing Chapter ten. Finally got it's action sequences written out. Then I continued to change it because I had eight paragraphs as one sentence. Yes, I know it is a rough draft, but still I can do better than that. Finished it added two hints at things to come and left it to play D3 some more. Day twelve: I felt like I was brand new, knocked out chapter eleven, chapter twelve. I started on Chapter 13. Since it was passed midnight I left it to count as day thirteen. Day thirteen: Still feeling great I whipped out chapters 13, chapter 14, and chapter 15. I got so carried away I wrote chapter 15 as 5,345 words. Went back in and split it in half. After doing this I made the split and put in the cut out half as chapter 17. Day fourteen: Renumbered chapters from fourteen up to 18. Created blank pages to fill in the number spots with chapter titles. Next I rewrote 13 to add a new chapter 14. Then I added in all the others in the sequence I needed. Day fifteen: Still bummed out I got so carried a way on the story line, I played D3 all day. Finally finished the new chapter 14. Day sixteen: Edited chapter 15, and 16 for the new direction I was taking the story. Played D3 and made Para level 425 on my witch doctor. Day seventeen: Muse smacked me for playing D3 and made me write out chapter 17, added in the split chapter as chapter 19 Day eighteen: Spent all day at the Va hospital and then went out to a movie with wife before she got mad at me for being fanatical on writing for Nano. Day nineteen: I did all the word counts for all my chapters with the title page and table of contents. Found I had done 52,568 words. After I had loaded in my word counts the Nano site wanted me to verify. Dang, no D3 today. I started creating one file with all my individual chapters. Disaster struck word didn't save my chapter 14 at all. I got so bummed out I started rewriting it. I forgot to save the single file with all my work. Then windows 8.1 crashed. I had just saved half of my new chapter 14. Screw it I'll fix 8.1 later. I rebooted into the windows 7 of my dual boot computer. Opened word and got the half finished chapter 14. I stayed up past midnight finishing it. Day twenty: Now that I'm fresh I started to reload a new single file with all the chapters in it. I found that I did have it saved on the second drive it was that windows crashed it stopped seeing all the other hard drives, I use in the system. I opened it up cut and pasted the missing chapter 14. I then promptly saved it again. Now I went in and copied all my text and pasted it into the verify your text box and won nano on day 20. I still have to fix my windows 8.1 but who cares I fought adversity, viruses, bad saves, and over came my D3 habit. To produce a readable but horribly written 52,666 words in twenty days. I hope none of you have this much trouble in your writing. I think I would have rather have scrivener crash on me. Then windows 8.1 because I know it saves all my writing in a single file and if I copy that file after I shut it down for the day onto a different hard drive I will always have a readable file to use when I re-install the program. I may be old, and forget things, but I learned the hard way you always back up your files. I have three copies of all 19 chapters of my current Nano project. It was sad to see three copies of an empty file. But I'm now past that and I have a new one done and replaced the empty one. Next I plan to shoot for 100,000 words now and finish this book this month. I just wanted to share the humor and obstacles I had to over come to win Nano this year. Last year I spent week three in the Va hospital and then three more weeks with a pick line and antibiotics going in every eight hours. I was so doped up if you would of asked me what nano was I would have asked you to tell me what it is, then promptly forget what you said. I only managed to write 45,000 word on that novel. I couldn't even play D3 either. My point with that game, besides being funny is when I start getting a writers block it works as a distraction and lets my mind relax and tell me what it is having an issue with. Since it is so repetitive it will bore me. Then I know what I need to do when I start in the next day. Also take a break with your family. You would be surprised at all the ideas your muse flows into your writing when you do. Besides being out in public it allows us to observe the people around us and get more character ideas. I am so glad I don't allow technology to put a crimp in my writing style like it has in the past. I hope you enjoyed my rough draft of writing Nano for 2015. The events in this story are true, but do to memory issues I might not have them in the correct order of happening. They in no way depict any member of this site other than me Gungunwarrior the author. |
| Prompt: To a dog, you're family. To a cat, you're staff. {I have a kitty I love dearly!} Do you agree? ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** The Run-on King PDG Member ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
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