Further News Update 10/06/14 (Please Read) · 10:32pm Oct 6th, 2014
Hello everyone.
I wanted to elaborate on everything that’s been happening, however, until now I have not been able to use the computer to type up a new blog post. I also wanted to discuss the issues surrounding the voice recognition software.
As I have stated in the past, using voice recognition software to write the story simply is not an option at this time. The reasons break down into two primary factors.
1). The biggest issue is that where I currently live, I have no privacy. My wife and I rent a room in a house with a large number of other people in it. I cannot stand it when people look over my shoulder to see what I am writing, so speaking it all would be even more problematic.
2) The second issue is one of neuroscience. Put simply, writing by voice and writing by typing are two very, very different things. At this point, writing by typing is second nature to me. I can write as fast as my fingers can type. Before this injury, this meant a pace as high as 8000 words per day. In addition, I was able to maintain a level of quality I have never achieved before. I was ready to write original fiction, I was getting that good.
Writing by speaking is much, much more difficult for me. I have to spend a considerable amount of time on every sentence to think of what I want to say, and even then, the quality does not match what I have been doing before. It is going to take a considerable amount of time and practice in order to get as good as I was with typing. In addition, this injury prevents me from doing any real work. Even in the retail sector. Which means, I have no income. This makes things even more difficult.
The doctor suspects that this is a repetitive strain injury. Although some of the symptoms may disappear as soon as a few weeks from now, provided I don’t do any more typing, the actual injury could persist for years. This means that, were I to resume my old pace any time soon, the injury would simply reappear. In fact, I may never be able to write that fast again.
One of the big issues with that is that a professional writing pace typically means between 8000 to 12,000 words per day. In order to make it as a writer I have to be not only good but also capable of producing about that much content. Writers make their money by selling their copyrighted material. The more copyrighted material. We have to sell, the greater our potential. This does not mean that quality is not an issue. Far from it. In fact quality is critical, because if your writing isn't good, no one will buy it and it will not matter how much you have to sell. However, unless you are George RR Martin, you really do need to be prolific.
I was using Rites of Ascension as something to launch my writing career. Something to practice on. While I got better and became more of a capable writer. It also doesn't hurt that I can point fans of Rites to my other works when they are done. The original plan was to find a part-time job doing something else so that I could have some income while I did this. My injury, however, precludes this possibility.
Even worse, it precludes my ability to complete Rites at a pace I was truly hoping for.
Now, I have tried this software. In fact, my MacBook Pro actually has it built in. OS 10 Mavericks has a dictation tool that is powered by the exact same software as Dragon naturally speaking. Apple basically just handed Nuance a giant bag of money to use the algorithms. (Love them or hate them, the one thing everyone has to admit about Apple is that they do have giant bags of money.) I found the software to be surprisingly accurate. But, the software built into Mavericks is not sufficient for my needs. In particular, it does not have a way to add a custom dictionary. When writing fiction, this is absolutely necessary. In addition, its ability to use Google Docs is shaky at best. Most of the time it just doesn't work.
Also, the reviews for this software are not particularly good, especially on the Mac side of things. Apparently, there is some kind of critical blog that makes writing anything of substantial size very difficult. This is a shame, because I really, really like using my Macintosh computer over my desktop PC. The PC version had complaints and reviews of install failures. However, those who got it working seem to find it pretty good. Hence, I went out and bought the PC version. I’m actually using the software to write this blog post. There would simply be no way for me to write all this with my hands the way they are.
Now, it is going to take me a very long time to get used to this. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for everyone’s patience once more. While the story won’t change at a high level, the quality in the details is going to suffer a little. It is also going to be much harder to do editing. Which is going to decrease the quality further.
The other issue is the aforementioned privacy issue. Before I can get back to work on Rites, I must move to a place where we have more privacy. The good news is that plans for this are already underway. The bad news is, it may be a little while before we get there. Even worse, this is going to be a more expensive place to live. In the best case scenario, we could have this new place by the end of the week. In the worst case, it could be months longer.
Once I am set up in the new place, I’m going to need some help. The software does not use Google Docs that well. It does however integrate pretty decently with Microsoft Office. I am going to be looking for someone to help me. While I am getting used to the way the software works, there are inevitably going to be a ton of mistakes. One of the most common mistakes is going to be missed. Punctuation. This is going to be especially true of quotation marks. I’m going to need a person or a small team of people willing to do an initial editing pass on everything alright with this software. This is not necessarily full-blown editing (although if you spot a more complicated mistake, you are free to point it out), but rather a light pass to catch mistakes as I make them, so I don’t have to focus quite so much on that. This would save me an enormous amount of trouble. Note, however, that use of Microsoft office will be required. In particular Office in the cloud, which is a lot harder to get away with not paying for. In an ideal set up, this person would correct things as I write them.
I’ll post more details about this after the move.
Now, as for the injury itself, we aren’t still completely certain as to what this is. It could still be that I have a pinched nerve in my neck, and I have an MRI scheduled for this Sunday to determine that. If it is a pinched nerve, plans change up a bit. However, the doctor is pretty confident that this is simply an RSI.
My hands ache very frequently. I have pain in the joints, as well as in the muscles. Even a small amount of typing causes them to hurt very badly. This means that I am no longer able to participate in the chats as things stand. I might find a way to make Dragon work with them, however, that is still in doubt.
Even worse, the pains have gone up my arms and into my shoulder and neck. This is accompanied by a pins and needles feeling. From the symptoms, I was fairly certain it was carpal tunnel. However, the test has ruled that out completely. This whole thing has been absolutely devastating, emotionally and physically. The nightmares still haven’t stopped.
That having been said, I cannot just stop. As I have pointed out, I am currently basically unemployable. The only avenue I have left is writing. If I stop, I become nothing. So, I cannot give up. I literally have no other choice but to move forward using the voice dictation software. This is going to take a lot of getting used to. It’s going to be one hell of a bumpy ride.
I hope and pray that the move is going to take place as soon as possible so I can get back to work. I have had a string of terrible, terrible news days. About the only thing that’s gone right in recent memory is the smooth move to Canada. Do not get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful to the cosmos for that having gone smoothly. But I need a little more luck than just that. As soon as I am settled into the new place, I will resume work. It’s going to be very slow going at first, I can tell. The only way to fix that, though, is practice, which needs to happen after the move, which has already been delayed over and over. Here's hoping that it actually happens this time.
I have started the commission for the new cover art. The first payment has already been sent. The artist is Silfoe, and you can check out her works over here in this link.
Note to editors: I’m going to need your guys’ help more than ever.
Bear with me everyone, as this is got a lot more difficult. Thank you again for sticking with me after so many issues.
I’ll post additional updates as news happens.
-Cv
P.S. Please forgive any typos. I'm not near used to this software yet.
Just remember CV, if there is anything we can help with over the internet (I'm mainly thinking money, but anything else that fits that might come up is fair game), do not hesitate to ask.
Mate... I have one thing, and only one thing to say to you: I admire your dedication, I really, really do. I mean, if I were in your shoes with pain so severe that I couldn't write I would just not write. But for you to keep going, to stick with it because you really just want to, not only for yourself but (I suspect) for your fans as well. That's something to look up to if you ask me.
As always, I hope you find out what it is and a way to (permanently) make it better. The words may seem empty since they've been repeated so often by now, but the message behind them still holds true.
Good luck. CV.
The only suggestion that I could imagine would help you would be the Datahand keyboard set but it's costly as hell and I'm not even sure it's manufactured anymore.
Well, let's hope that this goes by as quick as possible, whatever turns out to be causing the pain in the end. You really deserve a rest from bad news and bodily pain.
Just remember that we won't go anywhere anytime soon, so one less thing to worry about.
I do hope that you are able to get things fixed with your wrist, so that you may continue pursuing your dream of writing professionally.
If this means that Rites will have to wait, I accept that. Your health does come first.
You should try out open office which is basically a ms office equivalent, it is free for everyone and that way you can just let people pass over the chapters and correct things for you without ms office. However, you would have to share the documents via dropbox or something in order to be a "cloud" sort of setup, which would actually work well.
It's awesome that you aren't giving up and are trying your hardest to pull through this, without letting it take you down. Very admirable indeed.
Hopefully it isn't a permanent RSI problem, if it is though, you could try some things to minimize the strain, as simple as changing your posture/seating habits, changing your keyboard layout to something like Dvorak, using a mechanical keyboard, or some other things. You can go very gentle on your hands and still be typing at ~90wpm without feeling even the slightest bit of strain with these changes, after your condition recedes, that is(still assuming it is RSI). I have been typing at 110wpm as a programmer, working super long hours and all, for more than a decade and have never had a single issue with my hands; typing at this speed requires literally no effort on my part either.
Dvorak's layout is actually optimized for typing in English, if I remember correctly you can type something like 90% of the English dictionary using just the home row, and 98% or something using just the home row and the top row. The distance your fingers travel is completely minimized and although there isn't a huge speed benefit(up for debate) over using qwerty, it is far, FAR better for your hands than typing on qwerty. You can look up the layout, it's fairly popular. You could be typing in Dvorak at the same speed, or slightly lesser, as you did in qwerty, touch typing and all, within a month or two. The basic concept of Dvorak is that all of your vowels are on your left hand on the home row, and all the most used consonants are on your right hand on the home row (without moving my hands from the default position my left hand is "aoeu" and my right hand is "htns", the full row being "aoeuidhtns").
I recommend mechanical keyboards because they vary in some important ways for your concern. You can get a mechanical keyboard that requires VERY little pressure to actuate the keys, meaning that you can just slightly press and the key responds. Another reason is that the actual actuation point of mechanical keyboards is somewhere about halfway down, meaning you don't have to press the key all the way down, only slightly.
By minimizing the distance your fingers travel across the keyboard to get to specific keys, minimizing the amount of pressure you use to press keys, and minimizing the amount you actually have to push down on a key, your hands would be doing hardly any work.
Hopefully this is a resolvable nerve issue in your neck and won't cause you problems later on, and I wish you the best of luck.
Pseudo citation on the benefits of Dvorak: Stack exchange link You can read through that and see people who have benefited from Dvorak via prevention of RSI and preventing wrist pain caused by it, even though it is directed at programmers (which is only the case because we notoriously spend the most hours in front of computers).
Some quotes if you didn't click the link:
"I switched to Dvorak about 4 years ago due to some pain in my wrists. It took me less than a month to regain my old speed, maybe three weeks. ... After less than six months, my wrist pain was virtually gone, and has remained gone (disclaimer: I used to play guitar and video games more frequently as well, so I'm not certain this was the only factor)."
"However, it does provide significant benefits in terms of preventing repetitive strain injury (carpal tunnel and the like)."
Etc etc.
Best of luck to you, and may all your endeavors come true in time.
Just keep up a positive look that there are ways to continue through troubles. I have an uncle who is blind and also a law professor, and I have no idea how he manages to write as much as he does even before he was able to really use a computer. (he still types by hand), but long story short, where there's a will there's a way. Never loose hope and drive.
Good luck Cv! Hoping for the best!
You know the guy I keep trying to get you to read, Terry Pratchett? His last couple novels have been via software dictation--he has early-onset Alzheimer's which has apparently made it impossible for him to type.
So! It can be done, once you have the chance to try out your Scotty impression in earnest.
I don't really know enough about the health issues to offer any advice. Best of luck, and it sounds like you understand the possible outcomes of your situation well enough that I doubt a random internet denizen could offer you something you don't already know.
As for editing, are you aware that Office Online (on docs.com and on the OneDrive web interface) is actually completely free for anyone? It's actually entirely feasible to compose entire documents in them. It sounds like you want to use the desktop version of office, but even then, your editors could do comments and corrections in Office Online. I've done it before - it works exactly like Google Docs with comments and real-time editing, but with the added benefit that you can be editing the same document in Word on the desktop and Word Online at the same time.
If you need any help getting started (or even help editing, if you're short on volunteers), I'd be happy to help. Before you get there, though, get yourself well. It's hard to have fun when you hate your life.
Condolences on your injury, and best of luck getting on the road to recovery.
2512574
This is one of those things that should be attempted with the utmost caution. The easiest way to make RSI worse is to try to work through it. Dvorak might help, but it could also make things worse (by encouraging Cv to do more typing to get used to the layout).
2513678 actually, I meant after his condition recedes, sorry if my wording made it sound like I meant right now, it was all suggestions for the future. I I thought I threw in a "after the pain recedes" in there somewhere, but it is a wall of text so I see how it can be missed.
Are there words that you absolutely will not use in the story? (Preferably a short one that has no homonyms.) Simply preface any piece of dialogue with the correct one and find → replace will do the rest. You could have a small “dictionary” of these for particularly favoured types of punctuation and simply use a macro to do find → replace operations for each one.
I found it silly that the only missed punctuation I found was where you said that there might be missed punctuations.
(I'm not complaining, it's amazing that even after suffering from a hand injury you try to find other ways to write!)
I'd love to edit for you! But I am a full time high school student, and I've never used cloud-based Word before. So, preferably, just email me the .docx file and I could give it a full pass.
Best of luck to ya, mate, and feel better.
2512999
Pretty snazzy that. You learn new things every day... Not as quick to respond as Google Docs though, at least not for the few minutes I just spent trying it out.
2516285
Aye, they're a bit more sluggish. On the other hand, they have pretty much all the formatting features of desktop Office, which is why I wound up using them. It's a shame Microsoft doesn't mention them more.
Sorry to hear that you're still feeling less than awesome
We're here for you.