Sunday 29 October 2006

Pic of the day: Ready to write about young love! Wheeeeeee!

Winding down for NaNoWriMo

I have still not caught up perfectly with my journal. As I write this, it is the 31st, in the evening. A few more hours and NaNoWriMo is upon us.

I have participated in NaNoWriMo for the last four years as well. Unfortunately, I failed every time. But for at least two of those years, a major reason for my failure was the pain in my wrist and shoulder. I suffer from repetitive strain injury; it is a chronic condition, acquired through many years. Actually, this year and the year before the pain has been less, due to more exercise (especially last year) and less of the stressful writing at work. Still, after days of trying to write several thousand extra words each day, the arm will eventually break down.

To help me overcome this problem I have tried to use speech recognition, more exactly Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which is considered the market leader, especially for the Windows platform. But again, trying to dictate several thousand words a day places too much strain on my throat. Living all alone, I am simply not used to talking that much. Especially not clearly and in English...

This year, I have an even newer version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, version 9. For native English speakers, it should have an accuracy rate of 99%! I am not one of those, though. As a foreigner, my dictation with always be less accurate and more of a strain on both my throat and my brain.

For this reason, and because of lack of time, the journal is likely to suffer. And after all, with seven years of archives, there probably won't be many days where I have some unique revelation to share with you! If there is, I would probably do so rather than working on my novel. But if not, this is probably going to be an "writer's blog" for the next month or so.

Of course, this is also part of my life. If you want to know me, you shouldn't entirely overlook it. But I won't require you to read my novels. Especially since I am not likely to complete them this time, either. (Actually, completing is not a requirement. Writing 50 000 words is. And that much at least am going to try!)