A Surprising New Way of Writing
If necessity is the mother of invention, then perhaps disaster—even a relatively small one—is the mother of necessity.
On a snowy Sunday, December 9th, I slipped on hidden ice, dislocated my elbow, and broke my rotator bone just below the elbow. That evening and in the days that followed I made a number of interesting discoveries.
The first was that if you arrive at a hospital emergency room via ambulance you might as well be the Queen of Sheba. You get instant attention. In my mother's last years she and I spent many weary hours waiting in emergency rooms, arriving via me with various small emergencies to be attended to. Most of our time was spent waiting, not being attended to. But then I didn't have flashing lights, five attendants, and a gurney on wheels. When you show up that way it seems that the nurses and doctors have been waiting just for you.
The second was that once the drama is over work that had been compelling will feel of little consequence if you find yourself caught in enough pain and disability.
The third was that when most of what you love to do—writing, cooking, walking the dog, working out at the gym—is suddenly taken away, you can spend an amazing number of hours stretched out on the couch half dozing, half reading a book, half wondering where your life disappeared to.
The only true deadlines I had waiting were for my blogs, and those are, of course, self-imposed deadlines. Fortunately, I already had blogs posted for the next several weeks. However, there were, as always, emails waiting to be answered, and I found typing with one hand a disheartening job at best. Then there was the question of how long I would have to wait before I could return to my work.
So I turned to my son-in-law, my resource for all things computer, and he set me up with the Dragon voice recognition software program. (He did much of that work, believe it or not, on Christmas Day while the family gathered.) I'll admit I was skeptical about writing with my voice. In the first place I've long been convinced that the brains I write with live in the tips of my fingers, not inside my skull. They certainly don't reside in my voice box. In the second place, I was certain I would spend most of my time correcting the program's errors. I'm still not entirely sure where my brain resides, my writing brain I mean, and the program's errors can be amusing—when I send an email to my friend Eugenie, Dragon insists on addressing "you Janie" and if I clear my throat it says, "Please say that again"—but I've found it to be amazingly accurate. You just say, "Wake up!" and it begins to record all you say.
What remains to be seen is whether I can truly think—and compose—by speaking.
What was my topic last week for New Year's Day … starting over? Sometimes it seems that life is entirely made of starting over.
Okay now. Go to sleep. Oops! Sorry, dear reader. I was talking to Dragon, not to you.