The gif above represents me popping in. I would call this a post of quickies but I know that’s going to be an absolute lie. I’m only on the first sentence in this post has long massive update written all over it. 😉

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Can you believe, as long as I’ve been using this dictation program, that it still doesn’t know I want it to capitalize My Little Pony? It’s like it barely knows me at all. Anyway, there’s a new My Little Pony show on television called Friendship is Magic. It’s supposed to be really good, good enough that they’re all sorts of people watching it, many of whom are grown women (and MEN who call themselves “bronies” which is awesome beyond all reason), and it’s become a very popular Internet meme with tons of animated gifts, comics, fan fiction, you name it.

Now, you would think that I would be all over this. I am, however, a poser who has yet to watch even a single episode and the first season is almost over. Pathetic. I even got the first episode free from iTunes and I still haven’t watched yet. They should make me turn in my rainbow hooves. But while I haven’t actually been watching yet, I have been eagerly consuming all of the content about it and I just loved the animated gif above. I seriously can’t wait to watch the series. It seems like they did such a good job with it. It’s from the people behind Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and the Powerpuff Girls and has characters from both the original 80s MLP toys and the current toys in stores today. Eagerly looking forward to watching.

Speaking of the dictation program…

Hand Pain

I need a cutesy nickname for my hand pain. I know, naming your ailments is a little bit weird, but somehow knowing the actual name of what’s wrong with me makes me feel tired and old. So I really want some kind of silly thing that I can call it that adds an aura of whimsy to the whole proceedings. I’m thinking of spaz hands in a play on jazz hands because when the pain forces me to use my left hand I’m constantly spaz clicking the mouse when I don’t mean to be. I’m accepting suggestions.

Anyway, I’ve been managing the hand situation mostly successfully the last few months. When my right hand started to hurt, I would switch to my left and when my left hand started to hurt, I would switch to the voice program. I guess you could say I just kept on working, I just changed how I worked based on what hurt because that was what the doctor had recommended: that I go on with my life as normal.

Then, last week, my hands started freaking out in a new and original way. They hurt bad enough that it scared me into taking a serious break and I spent an evening doing nothing other than reading a graphic novel (Buffy, in case you were curious) which I didn’t even hold in my hands and just left on my lap. The next day they seemed to be much better and so I went back to work, which turned out to be a serious mistake. At first it was deceptive, they didn’t hurt much more than usual. But during a long car ride on Sunday evening, my whole arm started exploding with the sharp, sudden spasms of pain that went down the length of all of my joints.

Obviously, it sucked. But worse than the pain was the whole what the heck element of this because of all the things my hands had done over this whole crazy history, they had certainly never done that. Does this mean that something new is wrong? Or is this just the progression of what I have into something worse as the doctor predicted? I have no idea. Not gonna lie, it scared the heck out of me.

So I went to total 100% rest mode. Voice program for just about everything, left hand on the mouse for everything else. No gym just in case that was having an effect on it. It’s hard to say if any of its helping since I’m not actually using my hands.

I’m wondering if stress is something to do with it. There’s all sorts of weird things going on in my personal life right now and I can’t help but wonder if that contributes to a flareup. If that is the case, it’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy because nothing stresses me more than when I can’t use my stupid hands.

But I decided to be positive about it. While there’s lots of things that the voice program can’t necessarily handle, one thing it’s great at is just putting down lots of words on paper very quickly. I’ve been trying to take this opportunity to just cram out as many rough drafts of things I’ve been meaning to write as possible for two reasons: one being to hopefully finish some of the projects I’ve left undone for a while and two being, because I am insanely far behind on my writing goal for the year. I’m not even going to tell you how far behind because it will only depress you. 🙂 But with the voice program I’ve been able to put a serious dent in my deficit and I hope to have an update soon where I can at least brag about being less behind.

Script Frenzy

You may have noticed a sudden increase in the number of posts about writing a script. That’s because Script Frenzy starts April 1 and I’m the municipal liaison (ML) for New Jersey again this year. I was originally going to be a Script Frenzy rebel and work on another novel, but since the selling of Three Oranges, I realized writing another stageplay might be in my best interests. (If you’re keeping track, I also have three other stageplay’s in various states of completion that I’ve been working on.)

What am I going be writing? Well, I didn’t have any particular ideas I wanted to write as a script but I did have an idea for a novel that I’d outline some time ago. The more I started to think about that novel idea the more I realized it probably wasn’t long enough to actually be a novel. Then, the more I realize there really wasn’t any reason why it couldn’t be a stageplay instead. So, a few days ago, the dictation program and I outlined that idea as a stageplay and actually think it has a lot of potential. I haven’t come up with a codename for it yet, I’ll let you know when I do. But I’m making that my Script Frenzy 2011 project.

Because I’m so behind on my word count, what I’m really hoping is that I finish the hundred pages for Script Frenzy early on and then I can use the rest of the month of write-ins and other events to get some other writing done. Of course, every year I say I’m going to finish early and every year I don’t. So we’ll see what actually happens.

The Love of Three Oranges

See, now I feel like the voice program is just messing with me. It’s had to write up the phrase The Love of Three Oranges literally hundreds of times for me, and yet it just then it wrote it as below three oranges. (Then when I tried to make it write “below three oranges” on purpose, it wrote “a low three oranges” just to spite me.)

Anyway, my war with DNS notwithstanding, I don’t have a firm release date for The Love of Three Oranges yet, but the publisher has made it clear to me that it is a very high priority to get it out within 2011. I should be seeing a final proof from the editor within the next month or so then it hopefully shouldn’t be but a few more months after that. I’m very hopeful we’ll see it for sale before the end of the year.

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I just wanted to give you all a short (ha ha not really) update on where I’ve been and what’s been going on before I inundated you on nonstop posts about writing a script. (In all seriousness, there shouldn’t be that many Script Frenzy posts, mostly because I’m just going be retweeting posts I wrote last year.) I appreciate your taking the time to read this far.

So, what should I nickname my hand pain?