Episode #148: We Are Amused About Minutia

Days of yore, days of simplicity, days of elasticity, days of genteelness, days of bygone.

Sometimes, when you least expect, you find yourself lost in the wind turbines of your mind, thinking about the past and the future left behind, when you suddenly realize, going forwards is actually going backwards at the speed of slow, and that the space-time continuum is just a fictional device that has made it into the daily lexicon of people who lack originality in their ordinary lives.

Good morning/afternoon/evening and welcome to the wide, wide, wide world of professional cornhole, where cheating is encouraged and no really cares if you're caught doing so, because hey, it's expected. I am your lovely host G.B. Miller, and today's myopic topic is minutia. Why minutia, you may ask? Well, back in the day, minutia was my game. Minutia is what kept me gainfully employed at a job where I was slowly being made redundant (hey, my post, my world) at quite a few agencies.

The writing minutia of the day comes courtesy of my latest writing project, called appropriately enough, Hot Mess. Because, you know, it's a hot mess. After all, how many people do you know, besides me, who are writing a three volume novel by hand, like John Boy Walton did prior to acquiring one of those newfangled typewriters? That's right. Nada. Zip. Zilch. The sum of subtracting a number from itself. The number 8 on its side. The average amount of electoral votes a Libertarian receives in a given election year. An exciting game of football. Etc, etc, etc.

So, I thought for today, I would throw out some minutia about the life of this writer with his current project. For starters, we have 33 chapters written, with a smidgen over 126k words. All 277 pages originally written by hand. Printed that is, before transcribing the end result to a computer. 

Now you must be saying to yourself, "meh, no big thing, you wrote 277 pages with pen and paper." Well my good friend, let me correct you on the following little processed chicken nuggets:

1} I used roughly 554 pages of notebook filler paper. Yes, you read that correctly. That breaks down to roughly 3 packages, with each package containing between 100 and 125 sheets of paper (high end count is when you buy at a reputable place, low end at places like Dollar Tree). Still think it isn't much? On to point #2.

2} Approximately 2 pages of notebook paper are required to create roughly 1 page of computer text. I say 'approximately' because back at one of my day jobs in the 90's I perfected the art of squeezing twenty words into a tiny space designed for eight at the most. So sometimes, I had a ratio of 1 1/2 to 1, because I could squeeze up to twenty-five words on a single line of paper AND I would use the entire side of the paper. Seriously. Still think this isn't much? On to point #3.

3} I now have a rotating set of four pens, two black and two blue, that are currently in use. I recently bought a cheap pack of ten black because I have 35 blue pens. Yes, don't judge me and my color preference. I have currently, to use YouTube's replacement word to the now very verboten word that gets your video de-monetized, unalived 6 pens (so far) over the course of this novel. By the flip side of the Sacajawea dollar coin, I have used only three black toner cartridges for those 277 pages. So are you convinced yet? Not quite? On to point #4.

4} Because I churn out, on average, one chapter per week, which is down from the initial three to four that I was churning out (all were re-writes from original material, so yeah) when I had started this project back in mid-May '22, the pinched nerve that I had started to develop in the base of my right thumb a few months ago has now completely engulfed the entire thumb. So now I have to modify the way I hold a pen so as to not aggravate so much. Not to worry, lots of YT breaks on my phone to help with the thumb. Are we finally convinced? A smidgen more needed? Okay, onto our final point, which is number 5 if you've been keeping track.

5} As I mentioned at the close of the first point, I have printed every blessed word out by hand. Printing is the only legitimate way I have to read my own handwriting. Currently, the only decipherable part of my handwriting is my signature. Everything else is sloppy enough to put a doctor to shame. Yes, it's just that illegible. So I print out everything, which in turn makes it all the more remarkable that I managed to write so many words/chapters. I've done it for so long in my life (about 16 years now, every since I had to teach myself how to write again once my hands began biting the dust) that I've developed into quite the speed demon, in that I can crank out, on average, about 2 1/2 pages per hour.

So are we now convinced that my exploits are the exception to the rule and that I'm actually doing an outstanding job with this novel, considering that I had started working on it in earnest back in May of this year? We are? Awesomesauce! I am so glad that my persuasion skills have done the work in convincing you that I am a very small somebody in your world of writers. And now for something completely different, Mrs. Miller.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved