I am an out of the box thinker.
As a homeschooler that statement should really go without saying.
For several months I’ve been having a really difficult time with my blog. Every time I sit down to write I feel my ribs constrict and I find myself under an asthma attack advisory. My voice comes in fits and starts and when I close my eyes to think clearly all I can see is a teeny weeny box daring me to fit all my grand thoughts and ideas into it. I can’t.
By the end of two hours I am worn out and have only been relieved of a scant 600 words. No wonder I feel as though my head is ready to burst, I find it impossible to whittle down the wordy load entrapped in it.
Three years ago when I first transitioned from the written word, longhand, to the processed word, on my laptop, I thought,
“This will never fly with me…”
Chained to the desk my MacBook didn’t offer all the possibilities of a garden swing or a park bench but that was before I understood that the chain was in my head, along with all those unwritten words.
I eventually adapted as I knew I would, the arrival of the wireless phone in our house a few years earlier gave me a valuable reference point to hold on to. The laptop is quite portable and when I gave in to the immediately legible “scrawl” that was the result of fast and furious pounding on my computer keyboard (as long as my fingers were in the correct position), inside, outside, on a boat, in a train, I was pleasantly astounded by the accurate results!
No transcribing.
No nasty holes in pieces of paper as words were angrily scratched out and arrows were drawn to new places with a system of symbols to guide the reader through the work as cleverly and smoothly as possible. Forget it if the guidance took place several days after the first draft has been completed.
Now there were nifty tools, cutting and pasting, inserting and deleting, was all this legal? The only thing missing was my unmistakable handwriting, a page that when picked up and scanned could be identified by a companion or friend as uniquely mine.
And what has happened to the writing by hand? The time is now three years later and of course writing on a keyboard has become not only habitual but preferable Handwriting now poses problems. To start with, it hurts, those grasping muscles are no longer used! Then my mind gets ahead of me, I find mental organisation of my thoughts a challenge. I manage to get down about every third word my hurtling brain is throwing at me, my spelling suffers as some descriptors defy speed, when I re-read it I am as confused as my words on the page.
Laptop writing is now flying with me.
It’s the medium in which I am writing that’s not. My blog has me feeling hemmed in. I am restricted to a 6×4 inch space with small font and only six lines visible at a time.
I love the way “view post” looks. Why can’t I edit there? I have to click back to the box to improve and polish my literary genius. I end up hyperventilating again. My grand ideas get all bunched up. I need more space. A bigger page on which to expound.
I need to escape the box.
I am glad I have finally discovered my blogging problem and a little bashful that it’s taken me so long!
Now I need to solve it.
On my desktop there dwells a little folder I entitled, “blogs11”, and there I release all the words from my cramped post to run around and arrange and disarrange themselves as they see fit, on an unrestricted full screen also know to a writer as, a blank page.
Aaah, nothing better!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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