Dear Reader,
As I mentioned before, I wrote fourteen pages of my novel while Word Raccoon and I were away at the dunes this weekend.
By hand. (Great shades of Great Expectations, am I right? By hand. Get it?) In my journal. (Remember, it’s All Novel, All August. Again, do we like that? Does the punctuation work? IDK, but I guess at over a week into August I’m committed to the bit.)
It seemed like a good idea at the time, writing by hand.
Actually, it was a good idea. I like writing in my journal when my hand lets me, and apparently Vacation Me was quite industrious because when I got home and counted the words, there were just over 2,000 of them.
The problem with writing by hand, of course, is that eventually someone has to type them up.
And I had already written them once. So, not it. WR called shotgun on that decision.
The very idea! It felt even more unfair to Word Raccoon who had watched me return home and immediately wash the dirty laundry, unpack all of the important things, open packages, and generally reset the house. (Oh, the poor tomato plant is drooping! I thought rain was forecast for the weekend. However, I’m pretty sure the skies are working overtime at the moment, so let’s hope my dear plant survives this monsoon.)
Anyway, I took photos of the pages this afternoon and asked an app to transcribe them for me.
Modern technology!
What a time to be alive!
Except…my handwriting is, ah, apparently not what it used to be. I think of handwriting I admire with sharp, confident edges, writing that says just the thing that your writing needs. WR says she could just inhale that. Well, that’s not my writing right now, though I do have a trove of that sort to gaze upon. Handwriting is a kind of art, isn’t it?
As to my handwriting at the moment? When I’m writing quickly, my handwriting can become…squiggly.
Still, the app did surprisingly well.
Mostly.
Well, except I had written:
A uni groundskeeper in coveralls.
The app transcribed:
Wini Wigginshereker in Coveralls.
Dear Reader, I cry laughed.
Who the hell is Wini Wigginshereker? And why do I love that name so much?
And why, having invented her, did the app apparently decide that in Coveralls was part of her proper name? Sounds like a take on a medieval name: Miss Wini Wigginshereker of Coveralls.
I know who she is now: Wini Wigginshereker in Coveralls, who has worked at Oakmont University (Ah, where we lay our fair scene) for thirty-seven years, owns an alarming number of keys, and knows exactly which faculty members are duds.
Unfortunately, Wini wasn’t the only unauthorized addition to my novel.
At one point Rebecca says, Lovely ring.
Or at least that’s what I wrote.
The transcription had her saying:
Grand ring.
Which sounds less like my creation and more like someone’s elderly British aunt approving an engagement over tea.
Then there was the note in which I wrote gaslighting and received qualifying on the page.
All of which meant that after escaping the task of typing fourteen handwritten pages, I still had to sit down with my journal beside my computer and check the transcription word by word.
Reader, we did not want to.
In fact, WR complained about it for longer than I care to admit. I called her a whining weenie and promised her leftover pizza. She said if I added on an episode of Hacks, I would have a deal.
Then I checked one transcribed page, which wasn’t too difficult because I knew almost immediately when I had not said something that way. (It’s the same sensation I get every effing time I read a short story I had published years ago and reach a couple of sections I KNOW weren’t the way I wrote them. I signed off on the revisions, so that’s on me. Ask me if Drema of Today would do that. SHE WOULD NOT! I’m not against revisions that make my work better. These didn’t make it worse or better, just different. And I preferred mine. Not that I feel passionately about this or anything. Right?)
And another page.
Correcting the mistakes became almost fun as WR roasted the app. Page five.
Page seven.
Another correctly transcribed uni! A shocking triumph, considering it was hit or miss on that point.
And then, somehow, I was finished.
All fourteen pages.
Two thousand odd words, now safely transferred from my journal to my computer, where I can begin figuring out what belongs in the novel and where. (The not-so-easy part. I mean, I have a general idea where most of it goes, but there’s a flow chart in the middle of it – remember the not-murder board? Yeah, that.)
Which means I have once again learned something I already knew and will almost certainly forget the next time I encounter a task I don’t want to do:
Sometimes the dread takes longer than the thing.
Although sometimes the thing also gives you Wini Wigginshereker in Coveralls.
And I think I’m keeping her. What should I do with her, dear reader?
BTW, I wrote this notebook poem this morning. It was amusing at six a.m. Let’s see how it plays during prime time. (As always, a notebook poem means it’s had very little revision, so please have mercy.)
Non-Rhoticity Chicken
I learned a term today
for something I have
long heard.
It’s a fancy way to say
Oops, the r’s gone away.
If you’re curious about
my title,
just repeat it
for a while.
Always in all ways,
Drema