Trans Iowa V10: Doing The Details

I can write the ol' fashioned way pretty fast, but digitally?

I am a terrible typist. Really, really bad. You might be surprised to know that, considering the blogs and written work I do. It is kind of ironic.

I remember when I first started writing online for Twenty Nine Inches. The founder of the site, who had asked me to contribute some content, was wondering one day what was taking me so long to post a certain story he was anxious to have up on the site. Back then, it was all about speed, and exclusivity that getting stuff up before the endemic media gave the site. I told him I was still typing it out, and I had been doing so for over an hour. He was incredulous. How in the world could I be so slow?

Of course, I had a typing class in secondary school. We all had to take it. It lasted a semester and took students from nothing to fast, competent typists. Well.......except for me, that is. I never really ever caught on. I recall that we had competency tests every so often. You could only be scored until you made three mistakes. Generally I was incapable of getting past ten words before I made three mistakes! Sometimes it only took one word. I felt pretty bad about this, so I cheated.

I would take the mechanical arms and press them by hand for each letter ahead of the "go" signal to get as many words on the page as I could with no mistakes. Even doing this, I could only manage a personal best of 21 words a minute. Yep, I was a miserable typist back then, and I've not improved much since.

I resorted to the "hen pecking", two finger approach, and it has served me well over the years. Well, I don't make so many mistakes, but it is slow and tedious work. To give you an example, I sent about 140 e-mails yesterday to the Trans Iowa roster and volunteers, plus a few extras for other reasons. Even with a "cut and paste" approach to the letter's body for the Trans Iowa stuff, it took over four hours to wade through all those e-mails, and that's without a break.

I should have timed how long it took to type this post, but I'd only get depressed!