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Author of The Draca Wards Saga. Book One, Familiar Origins, is an award-winning YA fantasy novel. Book two, Plights, is currently available on Kindle.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Gadget Girl Fails!


As you can probably deduce from my last post, even after weeks of tinkering I still cannot get my apps to post exactly the way I want them to. But I do not blame the apps. I am under the delusion that I can immediately grasp any new technology and master it by simply playing around with it for a few days. Hello! McFly!!

That may have been true ten years ago when my brain was young and fit and didn’t have the strain of having to keep pace with three kids. My oldest son has several CompTIA certifications, so he officially knows more about computers than I do. That is humbling in itself. But deep down I fear that the Peter Principle applies to technology as well, and the day will come where I will no longer be able to grasp the concept of the latest and greatest invention since sliced bread. That thought has kept me awake at night more than once.

Aside from my paranoid thoughts of becoming too old and too stupid to work an iTouch, the device that I believed would be the solution to all my writing obstacles has in itself created a big one for me. I consider myself an average texter (though I can't hold a candle to my son) and I am comfortable enough with the touch keyboard on my iTouch, but when I use it to get some prose down, my writing slows to a virtual stop. At 50 wpm, my typing was never very fast, but the iTouch brings it down to 15-20. And even with the auto-correct function, I see the typos that I drop as I type, and the temptation to go back and fix is just too much for me. Yesterday I did some writing while waiting for my youngest son at martial arts class. Forty minutes. Eight sentences. FAIL!

I still love my iTouch, and I love to be able to write on my tiny device while I am out and about. I just have to get better at it. And I probably have to stop trying so hard. My blog has suffered because of it. And I have a map to finish, but more about that next time.

B.