Venialia

Today's obscure word of the day is venialia.  It means minor sins or offences.  I might need to find a way to work that word into a story, I find it to be a neat word.

So, as you may have noticed previously in my blogs, I prefer to write all my stories by hand first.  I have a logical reason for that.  If I'm typing on a computer, I tend to make immediate corrections, and edit, and edit, and edit as I go along.  This slows down the creative flow, and often causes me to lose focus on what I'm actually writing.  As a result, the first time I get my story typed up, it's actually my second draft.  I find that the edits and corrections are more suited to the story after the segment is already written, and therefore does not detract from it as much as not getting the segment properly written would do.  It also helps me attempt to keep up with my creative mind.  Granted, neither method of input comes close to keeping up with my mind.  Some stories I write the entire story before typing anything up, others I will write a few pages at a time before typing it up.  Either way, the only personal writing I do directly to computer are items like this (my blog posts, Facebook statuses, etc).  I've also tried to have a portable recorder of some type to dictate, but that doesn't work for anything except ideas.  I don't "see" what I've dictated, and have a tendency to lose focus if I'm trying to orally state a story.  Also, if I'm orally stating a story, I have to be in the mindset with a story in mind already to tell it, otherwise, my creativity completely drains out (often for days at a time).

My wife will hear me when I start typing something long, because I have a strong typing method when I type fast.  When I'm typing something short, the keystrokes tend to be softer.  When it's longer, though, my speed and intensity increases, which sounds harsher on the keystrokes.  It's especially noticeable with the space bar on most keyboards, probably a result of how the space bar takes input and is much larger with more hollow area underneath it for a sort of echo sound.  She often thinks I'm typing up a response to someone being an idiot online, because until recently, I haven't been doing much writing (also, as noted above, I tend to hand write most stories first).

Lately though, I've been using http://750words.com to try and keep momentum going.  It's a sort of challenge to use it for my intended purpose of story writing, but I use it as follows:  I type up my "second draft" of my stories there before cutting and pasting them into the Microsoft Word document the words will eventually call home while they wait to be published.  I also type up my blog posts there before copying them to my blog site.  I have noticed that I need to copy it on the same day I type it, because once it goes into the archive, if I "export it" it no longer has carriage returns, etc. to mark paragraphs, so I either need my hand written version to use as a guideline, or I need to figure out where they are on my own.  It's a real pain to do after the fact sometimes (unless there's lots of dialog, in which case it isn't quite so hard).

I've made some changes to my blog site recently.  I've put a picture behind the blog title.  Currently, it is Michael Konrad Hirt's A vanitas still life with a candle, an inkwell, a quill pen, a skull and books.  I might change it up from time to time.  Also on the side is recent books I've finished reading (which usually, though not always, means unabridged audiobook).  I also have struggled to figure out how to get my blog posts to automatically post to my other social media sites, then I found "If This Then That" (http://IFTTT.com) where you can set up a "recipe" that, in this case, says "Anytime there is a new blog posted, create a post on <Facebook> or <Twitter> or <Tumblr>" (I had to set up three recipes for it.  It seems to be working so far, so I no longer need to post a link, or copy the text and paste it anymore to accomplish the same task as I used to do.  In theory, every blog post I make will be linkd from each of those sites (and any others that I join in the future).

That's all I have for this blog post.  Thanks for reading.