How Not to Hurt

I’d been ready to say that I didn’t think much about ergonomics, but then I took a look around. The lifelong pursuit of anything that might keep migraine pain to a dull roar has given me a whole lot of tools in my ergonomics toolbox. Some are things I just like. The rest are attempts to mitigate or prevent pain.

In the ‘I just like it’ category:

• Positive click keyboards. Straight. I expect some acknowledgement from the keys when I type. I need that sensory feedback or writing isn’t writing and I will be deeply dissatisfied.
• Writing in front of the fake fireplace on the sofa, usually with a cat in my lap – NOT ergonomic but warm, cozy, and purry.
• Writing in bed. Also not ergonomic, but at the end of a day, it’s a lovely segue into sleep.
• Noise canceling headphones. I swear to you these are why I am not currently doing life in a deep, dark prison somewhere.
• Creeptastic playlists. Ambient music has grown up on YouTube. I can find SciFi themed creepy stuff, I can find stuff that’s themed to particular fandoms – Alien, Cthulhu, zombie movies all kinds of stuff to write mayhem to.

In the ‘No Pain, Please’ category:

• Putting my monitor at eye level and my keyboard at waist level. I have an adjustable laptop desk with legs that can be adjusted any number of ways. I use it to get my laptop up high enough, so I look straight ahead at it. I use an auxiliary keyboard and mouse on my work surface to promote upright posture and to keep my head in a neutral, upright position rather than tilted down or carried forward of my spine. There was physical therapy involved in learning that this posture was my goal.
• Stand/sit desk – this is basically a desk that lets me stand when I want or sit when I need to, I also have a treadmill desk with one shelf set at eye level for the laptop and a waist high work surface for the keyboard and mouse. Variety, it turns out, also helps prevent pain.
• Blue blocker glasses. These really help reduce migraine pain. Not incidences of migraine – but with blue blockers, I don’t start a migraine and go from 0 to 60 on the pain scale in a few seconds flat. The blue blockers give me a much gentler ramp to ‘hey stupid, get flat’. If you need these, don’t cheap out. Real migraine glasses target two specific wavelengths of blue light. Cheapy glasses just throw a filter on some plastic and call it good. The real thing gives you targeted protection that’s worth the extra cash.
• Taking a daily 20-minute NSDR break. This isn’t just for posture. It’s for the brain and your entire nervous system.
• Exercises - I have a set of specific back and neck exercises designed to keep the shoulders pulled back and to counteract overstretch in the back of the neck. Those help.

In the normal course of generating a story, writing shouldn’t hurt. If it does, there’s likely a reasonable ergonomic solution. Sometimes, it means getting a professional like a physical therapist involved. Sometimes it means breaking up a repetitive motion cycle and giving weary muscles a rest. Ergonomics come down to you conducting a set of informed experiments to find out what helps you. It’s hard to have fun when what you love hurts you.

The One Resource Every Writer Needs

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is references. We're asking our bloggers what one writer's reference do you often consult? Database, community, club/org, book, etc.

I'm going old school and picking my ragged, much-beloved paper copy of The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale. My copy is the 1978 edition and I may have had it nearly that long. I'm pretty sure I had it in high school. I used it for writing papers all the way through high school and now I use it for writing novels. 

You guys, this is THE BEST RESOURCE EVER. 

It's not a thesaurus, which tends to lead the casual user down twisted paths of etymological absurdity.

It's worlds better than anything I've been able to find online. (I have looked, because sometimes I want a quick reference and I don't want to have to step off the treadmill to pull this bad girl off the shelf.) Online references are so much more limited.

What The Synonym Finder does is allows me to explore and refine a concept. It leads me to branching and diverse terms for the Thing I'm Trying to Describe. You'll note I have sticky notes in place for words I often use - like "blue" and "black" - that I want richer, more precise and more interesting images for. 

Everyone should have one of these!

Stealing the Best and Leaving the Rest

A year or so ago, I went to a friend's house. We were making supper together, running our mouths and generally having a great time. Until she tried to clean a head of cauliflower. She had an itty bitty cutting board and a tiny, dangerously dull paring knife. I watched her hack away a green leaf or two for several seconds, my heart in my mouth, as she complained about how hard it is to cut up cauliflower.

Terrified that she was going to slice off a digit, I stopped her and asked if I could cut up the veggie while she moved on to other things. She gladly handed over the knife and the innocent head of cauliflower. I brought out the cutting board I'd brought - one at least three times the size of hers, and I brought out my 8 inch Shun knife. (Yes. When someone asks me over to help cook dinner, I do take my own tools.) I turned that cauliflower on its head, set my knife against the stem and sliced the whole thing in half like it was soft butter.  Within 120 seconds, I had the cauliflower cored and chopped, ready for the pan.

My hostess said bad words and demanded to know what she'd been doing wrong. The answer was simply: Wrong tools for the job.

Writing training, to me, is precisely the same. If you've never seen anyone take apart a book the way my hostess had never seen anyone take apart a big vegetable, you'll never know that your tools are inadequate to the job you're trying to do. So I'm always interested in how someone else approaches the task of building a novel and a career.

For me, as I take a writing class, I remind myself that I'm sorting through someone else's toolbox, just trying the tools on for size. Some don't fit my hand and never will. Others kinda sorta fit and might actually fit perfectly once I level up enough to need them. On rare occasions, I find a new tool - a new way of approaching story, a question for a character sketch that lays that person out for me. Whatever it is, I have zero compunction about picking up that tool and claiming it as my own.

My Zen attitude was hard won over several years, though. Used to be, I'd go to a workshop and come out convinced that I was doing writing all wrong. It would send me into a tailspin for weeks. I don't know when and how it changed, but I finally wised up. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was simply doing things my way - and possibly with faulty tools. The people teaching workshops weren't there to judge my methods, they were merely sharing what worked for them in the off chance that someone else could use it, too. Now, it's all listening to presenters talk, picking up books on craft, and making sure I get words every day.

Where you go to learn depends entirely on what you're wanting to level up. I DO recommend pacing yourself. Work on one thing at once. Don't tackle deep POV the same month you're working on eliminating telling words. Trying to pay attention to everything at once is the road to perdition.

I go to Mary Buckham and will take just about any class she has to offer because I've learned that Mary speaks my language and has the unique ability to break down story, character, scene and sequel, and hooks in a way I can process. This is thick stuff, though. Light 'n fluffy it ain't.

Conferences - especially the conferences aimed at the business end of writing. If I were looking for an agent or a new editor, I'd go to RWA National. I'd go to workshops and I'd pitch. But those aren't my goals now so I save my pennies for the annual NINC conference. It is jammed full of workshops and presentations from various vendors who work with the indie published authors. It's the place where indie authors gossip and chat about business. I learn more in those three days than I do almost a year long.

The hard news, though? There aren't enough tools in the world will change it if you don't write the thing.

Learn craft, sure. But above all, learn yourself.