I cut my nails late last night. In a quick break during my final 500 word sprint. One reason was to just do something other than typing for a few minutes. The other was to cure one NaNoWriMo complaint, a sore little finger on my left hand.
My nails weren’t particularly long, a bit longer than usual, but shorter than they usually are when I cut them. But there’s a special problem during NaNoWriMo. I keep hitting the control key every five seconds to check my wordcount (Control + R is my shortcut for this). And when you hit the left control key the quickest way to do so is with the top/back of your left little finger.
Now I don’t have a particularly hard keyboard to type on, it’s a full sized keyboard, but with laptop keys. But even though my keypress is only three millimetres, as opposed to six to eight on most keyboards, it was still enough that bending my nail a little each time I hit control was starting to hurt.
So far this is my only NaNoWriMo injury this year, and compared to some of the complaints excessive typing might cause it’s mild enough. Let’s just hope it stays that way.
Can I cut my neck? Seriously. The chair I have here at home is the worst ever and sitting here, typing, is causing my shoulder muscles to cramp and my neck to hurt like hell. Haven’t found a cure for that yet (except not typing, which is not an option).
But trimming fingernails is a good idea. Mine are getting a little too long for marathon typing sessions; I start to sometimes hit neighboring keys of the one I targeted.
“So much to do, so little time.”
How’s your wordcount coming?
My wordcount isn’t coming on quite as fast as I would have liked so far today. I took some time out to relax, had to make a few phonecalls and go to a meeting, so I’m only at a few hundred words so far. The only time I’m planning to leave the desk from now on however is when the Pizza I just ordered arrives. So I have some hope of getting at least 5k or 6k for the day, possibly a bit more.
That’s still going to make my aspirations to reaching 50k tomorrow a rather steep challenge, but I’ll have to wait and see. For now I’m just going to start writing and see where it takes me.
Well, I hope the Pizza and your keyboard get along well and good luck with your word count. I am looking forward to the weekend, it’s the first weekend I will dedicate to writing (almost completely). I don’t know exactly how many words I should expect from myself, but I am aiming for something like 3-5K per day. Hopefully it will be more, but I want to set myself goals I can reach, otherwise I’ll be disappointed rather quickly.