Month: February 2010

Well, middle-aged writer is more accurate. I’m not 103 yet!

I have made a transition in my writing life that I never thought I would accomplish. I have :::gasp!::: finally begun typing in black font on a white screen. It’s almost like typing on white paper. Amazing. Why didn’t I think of this before?

Back in the Blue Ages, when WordPerfect was the word processing program of choice, I became used to typing white font onto a blue screen. One day My Liege came home from work and announced that his employer had converted to this strange new program called Word. We were getting a new computer, and he didn’t want to have to know how to work two word processing programs (plus, back in the Blue Ages the hard drive on our computer was so small that it didn’t have room for two word processing programs). So it was decided that we were moving to Word. I wailed, I gnashed my teeth, I believe I even pulled out some of his hair. I LOVED WordPerfect. For a writer, it’s amazingly simple compared to Word. The Reveal Codes alone was enough to keep me committed to WordPerfect for life.

However, then I learned that not only had my husband’s employer moved to Word, but Word was the program of choice pretty much across the publishing industry. Teeth ground down to gums, I made the transition. But one thing I refused to give up was typing in white font on a blue screen. Typing in black on a white screen hurt my eyes. Plus, it didn’t look pretty. It looked business-like, not creative. It stunk.

Lo and behold, Word has a “white font on blue screen” option for those of who were dragged kicking and screaming away from WordPerfect. I used that option religiously until this year.

Two things happened. (1) My eyes are older and weaker than they used to be, so suddenly the black font on white screen doesn’t seem so harsh; and (2) as my frequent blog readers know, my desktop died. I had a full manuscript request, so I was forced to work on My Liege’s and Youngest Son’s laptops. They both type black on white. Afeared of screwing up their laptops somehow, and noting that the laptop screen wasn’t as big (and therefore not as blinding) as my 19-inch desktop LCD monitor, and rationalizing that I was only editing not creating, I boldy went where my fingers had not gone before and typed black on white. And after a few days it wasn’t that bad.

Then the weirdest thing happened. I loaded Word onto my new desktop, opened a document, cursed that the default was once again black on white, went into the options panel and changed it to white on blue, then…decided the blue screen was too bright. Yes, finally, finally, after all these years, I have made the conversion. It will be interesting to see if it sticks. Having submitted that requested full manuscript, I am now returning to revisions on my single title. Revisions I can manage typing black on white. I do most of my revising with pen and ink, anyway. But when I finish those revisions and finally start crafting a new story, that will be the real test.

Have you forced yourself to learn new writer tricks? The other biggie for me was going from two spaces after a period to one. When I finally decided to make the move, it only took my fingers three or four days to become accustomed to not typing that extra space. I thought it would take forever. Not so.

Maybe there’s hope for me with the tiny keyboard on my new netbook, after all. It’s replacing my old AlphaSmart, and if I could type on that, I should be able to type on the netbook keyboard. But I did order a mouse to go with, and I can’t wait until it arrives. I still absolutely abhor touchpads. Maybe someday I’ll get used to them..but not now.