I’ve had enough. I stole my husband’s keyboard.
Last night as we climbed into bed we were talking about my book sales over past weekend [The recent Heartwarming Sale was a huge success!] and I was saying how I needed to get started on the third volume of Atlantis: TVC soon, but that even typing up the outline was difficult because the keyboard I had bought to fit the smaller space available on my desk was too stiff to write on. So half-asleep he proposes: “Why don’t we just trade keyboards?”
Now, for reference, I had asked him to trade keyboards when I was still using my giant gaming keyboard and he said no, despite having way more desk space than I do. Now that I spent money on a new, smaller, stiffer keyboard he’s changed his mind? I say as much, and get nothing but a snore in response.
My husband never remembers anything he says while half-asleep. So after he left for work today I switched our keyboards. I’m writing this entry from his keyboard now, and it’s amazing. I press a key, and it actually goes down! I don’t have to smash certain keys to get the fact that I have touched them to register! My backspace is normal size! Bliss.
Fortunately for me he’s on a miniature kick right now so he’s building armies and hasn’t been on the computer in almost two weeks. He still has several boxes left to put together and paint; it could be months before he notices.
I never thought I could hate a keyboard so much. I mean, I could have sucked it up and bought a different one, but not many are compact enough to fit in the space I have available. Plus there was no floor model for this particular board, so I couldn’t test it at the store. I tried everything I could think of to break it in, but even with several weeks of that there were still problem keys. I mean, I would be writing for five minutes, go back, and realize most of my words were missing the letter A. My fingertips hurt after typing on that thing! I looked up the model online to see if anyone else had that issue, or if it was just me. It was at this point that I discovered there were whole forums dedicated to “keyboard feel” and I was stunned. I wish I had known keyboard feel was a thing before I bought a new one. I thought that for typing, all keyboards were keyboards! Turns out that I am a dumbass and unknowingly bought one of the stiffest boards on the market.
So I suffered through two months of crappy keyboard for nothing.
Well… part of that was negated by my torn rotator cuff, so it’s more like a month and a half–but it was still a month and a half of hurt fingers and swearing! At any rate, I’m finishing up my outline and plan to break ground on volume #3 tonight after the little one goes to bed. I am ridiculously excited to write again, and I hope to get this volume out just as fast as the first one. My goal was originally to release two books a year, [Back then I didn’t know any better!] but on average it takes me six to seven months to write the first draft, then two more months for edits, revisions, and creating the artwork. That means each book takes around nine months from start to finish and my output is two books every year and a half–which isn’t too bad considering that I’m raising a kid and sleeping on the rare occasion as well.
I already have a complicated relationship with sleep without hating the fact that I need so much of it to function. Besides that, energy drinks aren’t the greatest thing for you–and I have something like a +25 versus caffeine, which sucks. When I get in a writing [or drawing] groove the first thing I do is a quick calculation of what time the kid will wake up, and how much sleep I would get if I could only keep writing for just one more hour! Before I know it many hours have passed, and I only get three hours of sleep before my three year-old is running around and trying to climb the walls while I stumble out to the couch and stare bleary-eyed into space while cursing the me of last night who thought it was soooo important to finish that chapter. Also, once I achieve enough alertness to even think of reading what I wrote, there is a 75% chance I will hate it and need to rewrite whole sections of it.
All this would be made a thousand times worse by having to do it on The Worst Keyboard in Existence. I have never been so happy to be rid of something in my life!
Well, except maybe that landlord who used to sneak into our house when she thought we weren’t home. She’d eat our food, and once she came over naked to do it. Ugh. Why did I have to remember that, of all things? Thanks, brain.
