This weekend, I did a nice long inventory of all the work I have in progress, going back to about 2019. It’s a good chunk. It’s also a very fragmented chunk.

I have horrific write-to-type ratios (which we all knew) and even worse write to revise ratios. What I didn’t know is just how much that impacts what my next steps will be. It seems that the reason I’m revising an urban fantasy about a Viking is that the space opera I keep thinking about just wasn’t typed.

I think I’m right that it’s written. In fact, I should probably be typing it, right now.

Obviously, I’m searching the internet for an app that will let me scan the text in, instead. Or… possibly a mail order secretary who types faster than I do, and doesn’t charge anything.

And the weird thing is, I still feel as though handwriting forces me to slow down and focus on what I’m doing enough to make it worthwhile. I don’t wind up with twenty-seven fragments in thirty two different documents this way. It feels smoother, and cleaner.

I’m still debating how I feel about that Viking. It just seems like there’s something wrong with that. (Maybe it’s the fine art of revising during a pandemic, or the fact that the story was written before the pandemic.) Anyway, it’s been dragging.

Dragging? I just found a revision notebook that I didn’t remember existed.

Time for me to get to work.

If you have any suggestions on programs that are good at scanning handwriting and producing typed text, I’d love to hear them.