General Chat

Well, I almost forgot about you guys in the stress of real life but I'm still around and will try to keep up for the rest of 2008.

NaNo2007 was a big wake up for me. It really did take care of a lot of my old fears about not being a good writer and reminded me just how much I love to write. My problem now is translating my NaNo creation into something that actually makes sense.

I started fixing the prologue and changed a lot, made it more descriptive, longer, etc. I am now halfway through the first chapter and already I'm feeling quite stuck. What I came up with during NaNo isn't what I wanted, and with a bigger view of the world in my head, I don't think I'll be able to get much further without changing the entire story from this point onwards.

So that's my current struggle. I'm enjoying writing again, even if it's just blogging every day, at least I'm expressing myself the way I used to and it feels good.

Thanks for your support last year and I look forward to doing it all over again soon!

NaNoWriMo 2007 Winner, yay!
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Hi nzfoxgrl, happy new year.
Good to see you back in the fold and into your writing.
Remember doing 50k words in a month is pretty frenetic. Aiming to strive for that word count, going for quantity and less quality it feels at times.
Now is the time to go over it and improve your work.
It's a great story,and Nano has given you the motivation and confidence to get going again. :)
I gave a draft to my student friends who were the characters in my Nano story, and has been well received. :)

Got a plot and Title for Socnoc 2008.
"To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Question."

Books are Humanity in Print!

I think I have you to thank most of all, for your kind words about my story! It helped me build up my confidence again.

Something else that is hindering my editing speed has been recently switching over to using the Dvorak keyboard. I used to be able to type over 100wpm on a Qwerty keyboard, now I'm on Dvorak my speed is back to about 60wpm. That's not slow, I know, but it can get frustrating when my thoughts don't make their way to the screen as quickly as I was accustomed to.

NaNoWriMo 2007 Winner, yay!
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Yeah that would be really frustrating I am sure. What made you switch?

http://vyanae.blogspot.com/

nzfoxgrrl, you could check out NaNoEdMo to help you with the rewrite of your NaNovel.

I'm also curious as to what made you switch as well as how you're finding it. I have been considering it after reading how Holly Lisle found it (With Fingers Struck Numb, Learning Dvorak and Dvorak & Me, 3 Months Later). The thing stopping me is the fact that I will still have to use a Qwerty keyboard at work.

No Excuses. Just Write.
SoCNoC - Untitled Chick Lit
Freeing the Flame - 30,065/40,000 words rewritten for May

I have been considering NaNoEdMo. I'm having a few real life stresses such as moving house (but not yet having another place to move to but only a week or two to go) keeping me more than busy at the moment.

I have been wanting to switch to Dvorak since the beginning of High School but the Qwerty keyboard problem held me back. I first discovered Dvorak thanks to Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. When I was 11 years old I already had a typing speed of 80-90 wpm and the other students in the typing class used to whine about how it was unfair that they had to learn how to type and I'd had more time to practise, etc etc. So I took up the challenge of "relearning" the keyboard to prove that I could still type faster than them even starting over from scratch. I managed a good 60wpm on Dvorak by the time I had been practising for about three months but couldn't learn the symbols due to not really having a visual reference on the keyboard in front of me so I gave up.

Cut to last year when I was starting to get REALLY worried about my RSI pains returning. Having always wanted to use Dvorak I started researching it again and found that Dvorak is actually available on any Windows computer because it is a language option. I decided to relearn Dvorak and suprisingly, even though I hadn't used it for over a decade it seems that my fingers hadn't forgotten how good it was. I used a sheet of paper in front of me as reference for the symbols and now I know the whole keyboard by heart.

I haven't used Qwerty for about three weeks now and when I am forced to go back I am reduced to hunting and pecking. It was a bit of a difficult shift at first, going from 100+ wpm to under 30 wpm at first then slowly climbing. I am currently on about 60-70 wpm and no longer need a chart. It is pure touch typing for me!

It's an easy thing for me now to set up Dvorak on any computer I expect to use for any length of time and then it's an easy switch just by pressing left ctrl+shift. Dvorak is my default keyboard for both home and work now and I did try to interchange between Dvorak and Qwerty but I can't do it anymore. It's just so much faster for me to change the language setting.

It hasn't eliminated my RSI pains but it sure has made typing a lot more comfortable for me. My hands don't need to move around the keyboard so much anymore, and I suspect by this time next year I should probably have my old typing speed back. I can already type again without having to stop and think what key I need to press, but I am still making some mistakes.

I don't think I'll ever want to go back to Qwerty now.

NaNoWriMo 2007 Winner, yay!
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Many years ago I learnt typing at high school. (Typewriters) We were made to have covers over the keyboard to prevent looking at the keys, to make us fast touch typists.
I was always peeking under the cover, and being smacked across the knuckles for doing so. (The good old days)
Consequently I am now a two finger typist. (I never liked office work anyway.)
I am intrigued though at this Dvorak system. Always willing to try new things.

Got a plot and Title for Socnoc 2008.
"To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Question."

Books are Humanity in Print!

I found that repetition is a better teacher than trying to just memorise the keyboard. While others were just typing what they felt like or cheating by copy-pasting their exercises, I was dutifully going through the repetition of "jkj; jkj; jkj; jkj; jlj; jlj; jlj;" etc. until I knew every letter automatically.

When I first went from 60wpm to 80wpm it was so sudden that my teacher actually pulled me up in case I had cheated. I think she was ready to be really disappointed in me but turns out I really DID get good overnight!

When typing on my laptop using Qwerty I found the keyboard would want to overbalance all the time. With Dvorak my fingers rarely leave the home row so I'm always balanced, even when it's propped precariously on my knees. All the vowels and the most commonly used letters are on the home row. It feels really good after a while, although at first it feels strange to have all your vowels on the left hand only.

NaNoWriMo 2007 Winner, yay!
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I found this site which some of you might find interesting.

http://dvorak-keyboards.com/

NaNoWriMo 2007 Winner, yay!
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Do you actually have a physical keyboard with Dvorak letters written in the right places? Or did you just use the different language setting and chart when you were learning?

No Excuses. Just Write.
SoCNoC - Untitled Chick Lit
Freeing the Flame - 30,065/40,000 words rewritten for May

I wish I had a Dvorak keyboard, actually. But no, I've never seen a Dvorak keyboard in real life. I just printed up a chart and taught myself from that, as you said.

I was speaking to a friend about it just earlier today, telling him how even though I have a Qwerty keyboard I still sometimes look down at it to get my finger position, and he suggested maybe covering the keyboard in klingon symbols to confuse anyone else who wanted to use my computer, since even if they knew how to touch-type it wouldn't help them at all!

NaNoWriMo 2007 Winner, yay!
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After reading this facinating conversation about Dvorak I decided to give it a go. It didn't take much research on the trusty internet to find out how to change my computer. This part was very quick and easy. Getting my fingers to learn how to type again is a different story. My typing is now painfully slow as I now have to think about every single letter, and glancing at the keyboard for help only makes matters worse. It probably doesn't help that I keep switching back to QUERTY for the sake of speed. But I will not give up as I live in hope that it will reduce the RSI pains in my wrist. My view is, however, the better you are on QUERTY the harder it is to change. Fingers crossed it's worth it.
:) RedFox

Let us know how you progress with it. I had never thought about switching until reading this post. Though I think I am pretty entrenched in what I am used to, so not likely to change any time soon.

http://vyanae.blogspot.com/

From what I've heard the benefit of the Dvorak over the Qwerty keyboard is that the Dvorak layout means that you don't have to move your fingers as far or as much to type. All the common letters are there for easy access. The Qwerty keyboard was developed because the typewriter mechanisms couldn't keep up with the speed that can be gained on the Dvorak.

I'm interested to try it myself now. Maybe over the weekend?

No Excuses. Just Write.
SoCNoC - Untitled Chick Lit
Freeing the Flame - 30,065/40,000 words rewritten for May

That's definitely the advantage I have discovered. My RSI pains have diminished so much since I started using Dvorak. I now only have one sort of niggling pain in my wrist and that's very easily identified as "overuse of the tab key" which comes with the data entry side of my job. I don't wake up with pins and needles in my hands like I did back in December.

But yes, at first it's painfully slow, and I tried switching between but found that really didn't help me at all. I went from 100+ wpm to what may have been 6 wpm as I was constantly pressing the wrong keys and having to correct myself.

If you do succeed at switching to Dvorak I would love to hear how it was for you. I really think touch typists should have a choice when they first begin to learn, then they won't have to fight with the finger confusion.

I would suggest working on a few short words first, especially the ones on the home row:

then, has, set, dead, teeth, heat...

Then work on remembering one letter at a time. I originally learned with exercises from Mavis Beacon typing back in high school, so I only had to deal with one letter at a time at first.

NaNoWriMo 2007 Winner, yay!
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This is just random but I wondered if Kerryn remembers the good old days of typing in 3rd form... that crazy teacher chanting at the front of the class: "A,S,D,F,J,K,L... SeMI-COlon!" over and over lol.

I found it all really silly at the time, but in the end, she taught me to type. I can't remember her name, but thanks, whoever you were!

Trying to find the time (as usual)!

I couldn't sleep last night, lol, and came up with a couple of sentences that you can type just on the Dvorak home row (plus the full-stop which is 'E' on the Qwerty keyboard). Maybe they can help with your practicing. =)

Sue has to see the dentist at nine.
He said she needs to diet on nuts.
The teas had a distant taste.
He had a detention at ten and hated it.
The dean is at the tent.
He is hesitant to sit on the heated stone.

They don't make much sense really but it's just for practice!

NaNoWriMo 2007 Winner, yay!
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LOL, Thanks for those, I'll give them a try. I'm getting faster tho, must be at about 20 wpm now (when I started I was doing about 4) I just did a whole essay for uni using it, and it took ages, but I got it done, and I'm sure sticking with dvorak the whole time has helped me learn the keyboard better. But it's really wierd when I go to type my name in, cos I've been doing that since I was about 7 and it comes so instinctively, I usually get to about 'upab' when I remember. LOL, maybe I should change the spelling of my name to that. "your name?" "Fran" "How do you spell that?" "'u' 'p' 'a' 'b'"...

seMI-COlon!! lol!! I totally remember that. Hilarious. :)

nzfoxgrrl, I think those examples you give show the benefit of the Dvorak. Es and Ts and Ns, all just at your fingertips. :)

No Excuses. Just Write.
SoCNoC - Untitled Chick Lit
Freeing the Flame - 30,065/40,000 words rewritten for May

redfox - That essay must have taken a LOT of patience! I was editing my story using Dvorak before I really gained speed and it felt almost like I had a disability when I thought back to the ease I used to have on Qwerty, but I don't miss Qwerty at all anymore. In fact, I can't believe how quickly I forgot how to type Qwerty at all, after all those years of using it!

Also, the last couple of lines in your post made me lol at my desk. =)

Kerryn - I don't think I would be ranting and raving so much about Dvorak if I didn't think it was absolutely awesome! In fact, I talk about it so much I'm still cringing a little waiting for someone to tell me to shut up about it already, haha.

NaNoWriMo 2007 Winner, yay!
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