Why I Write
When I write, I draw on my experiences as a woman with a painful past, a rapturous wife and mother, a world traveler, and a spiritualist. For me, writing is an art form. Like an artist, the work becomes more than I imagined it would be. When I set out to write a story with a particular idea or character in mind, words I cannot claim as my own flow from a magical and mysterious place through me and onto paper. The work takes on a life of its own; it is living art. The process fascinates me, satiates me, and makes my life more meaningful.
Please read my stories! If you would like to offer me feedback on my work, please click here and sign up for a free membership: https://heftynicki.Writing.com
I hope to see you there!
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Welcome!
In 2011, my main focus will be on writing a novel. Since I'm a novice novelist, I've decided to come at the project from different angles, exploring the genre and experimenting with its elements. This blog and its offsite sister blog will be my journals where I attack novel-writing one day at a time.
As I was creating my BlogSpot page, the inspiration for the blog solidified in my mind. I named that blog "One Significant Moment at a Time." In essence, I want to use the format as a reminder to walk through my life with my author's eyes open, taking in the details, feeling the emotions of the day. As moments unfold and I feel their affects on me as a person, a woman, a mother, a sister, a member of the world community, I'll let the writer in me talk about it.
Creative Nonfiction is the genre most fitting to describe what I envision accomplishing here, moreso than blogging or journaling. The style is best suited, I feel, for my ambitions as a novelist.
In addition, Friday entries will not be written by me. Instead, I'll turn the keyboard over to one of the characters in my novel. He or she will relate the events of the day as s/he saw them, through the filter of his or her perception.
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Become a Follower there, and I'll send you a Supportive Merit Badge! -- You don't have to go to blogspot.com each day; in fact, I post much of the same entries here in this WDC blog. But building up a verifiable readership may prove important one day when I'm knocking on literary agent/publishers' doors!
To Follow, just click "Follow" on the right margin of my blog page. You'll have to sign in using, or create, a Google account (it's free and only takes two minutes!), and then follow the short instructions. It's easy, and I'd appreciate it so much!!
2011 Reading Goal = 25 Books in 52 Weeks. To see the list of books I've read so far, CLICK HERE 
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Thanks for reading!!
November 3, 2009 at 10:56am November 3, 2009 at 10:56am
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An hour into my first Nano writing session of the morning, I was typing along in Word 2007 with my eyes closed when I heard a "tick." It was a soft noise, almost imperceptible. I opened my eyes and glanced to the left, where I thought the sound came from. Nothing was there; there was no obvious source for the sound. To the right I saw the cat, asleep in his window seat. Dismissing the sound, I went back to typing.
Nothing happened -- on the screen, I mean. My keyboard wasn't responding to my strokes; all that happened each time I hit a key was a soft "tick" sound. Panic.
My mouse worked fine. My system wasn't frozen up because I could navigate between Word and WDC pages. Then I noticed a new icon at the bottom right of my screen.
It looked like a stopwatch, and when I hovered the mouse over it, it said "FilterKeys." Ah-ha... WTF are filterkeys? I picked up the phone and called my sister, Noelle 
She did a quick Google search, and together we figured out my quandary. (Thanks, Sis! )
According to Microsoft, "FilterKeys is an accessibility option that adjusts the keyboard response so that inadvertently repeated keystrokes are ignored. Using FilterKeys, you can also slow the rate at which a key repeats when you hold it down."
Apparently, the default shortcut to filterkeys is holding down the right shift key for eight seconds or more. I must have done this in an indecisive moment while I was writing. How annoying.
There are several ways to turn off filterkeys. What got me out of suspended animation was holding down the right shift key again for more than eight seconds. When I hit the next key -- success! I was never happier to see fifteen k's in a row!
After reading up on the subject, I've learned there are other ways to turn off, or disable, pain-in-the-ass filterkeys. They are:
In addition to holding down "shift" for more than eight seconds, you can also hit both shift keys at once to turn off filterkeys.
To permanently disable filterkeys, go to Control Panel and double click Accessibility Options, then click Remove All Check Marks. Apparently, though, this isn't enough to disable filterkeys. After you do that, you have to go to the Settings submenu and remove check marks there, too. Click OK twice, and you'll be free of filterkeys for good.
Here are a couple off-site blogs I read with filterkeys entries:
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/08/30/stupid-windows-features-disable-filterke...
http://www.jesush.com/index.php/2004/11/15/how-to-turn-off-filterkeys-in-windows...
And just to be fair -- since filterkeys weren't designed solely to drive me crazy , here's a site that explains why the feature is a good thing:
http://dawn.thot.net/cd/13.html
Okay -- my writing break is over! Back to Nano-writing in a filterkey-free environment! 
Footnotes http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsxp/filterkeys.aspx |
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