flitting on fiction

Today I am working on getting one proposal and 2 short position papers written.

The proposal is for my Major Research Paper, which is titled “A Public In-Between: Fiction for Emerging Adults” - and most of it is done, but for one section which needs to describe the literary theory that I will draw on in my work. I know which resources I will be using: Michael Warrner’s Publics and Counterpublics , and (psychologist, not literary theorist) Dr. Jeffrey Arnett, and  (researcher & author not literary theorist) Don Tapcott, who wrote growing up digital and grown up digital - but I haven’t really sorted out how to actually write the section. 

Then there are the 2 position papers. These are for my Viral Contagion course - some of you have already had a look at the first one I did for this course: Homeworking: Virtues of a Solitary Bird by Juan Goytisolo . My second paper will be about William Gibson’s novel, Pattern Recognition , and specifically about the fact that in this work, the disease sort of contagion (TB and HIV) are portrayed as largely contained (although it is acknowledged that they are not really) - while the contagion of commerce - brand logos, etc. run rampant in society at large and even go so far as to cause illness in Cayce, the protagonist of the story. Then I will have to come up with a topic for a third paper - no idea, at this point, what that will be, but hopefully I will think of something soon. The prof did say that one paper could relate to something we covered in our presentations rather than directly to the novels we read, so might go that route and look at viral marketing as per Bzzzagent , or flash mobs . 

Anyway …as I continue doing with Ross calls “tippy-typing” all day long, I am very aware - and very grateful too - of how much I appreciate some of my ~toys~. Without them, there is just no way that I would be doing the school thing and blogging and working on my children’s story for the Writers’ Union of Canada Writing for Children contest .

There are a number of products which allow me to keep going in spite of the fact that both of my wrists are still damaged and weaker than they should be. I love my Evoluent mouse . A normal mouse requires that you turn your hand into what is really an unnatural position that results, according to my occupational therapist, in the bones in your arm having to cross. Which is fine, if you haven’t damaged them in an accident, or overworked them to the point of carpal tunnel syndrome - or aren’t on your computer all day every day. For those who have any sort of issues - or want to avoid any future problems - though, the Evoluent upright mouse is a great product. 

While it felt a bit awkward to use at first - especially until I figured out that the right click button is - by default - the middle one, not the bottom one - it didn’t take long at all to adjust to it. You can change what each of the buttons do if you like - but for me, it was simply a matter of learning what was where. The one thing to know about this mouse is that it is not swappable - you need one for either right-handed or left-handed use. 

Another thing that the OT provided me was a book holder - which I find invaluable for when I need to type stuff from any of my texts out.   Mine is a simple wire frame thing that sits on my desk but I couldn’t find a picture of it. Anyway, I’m thinking I might upgrade to this sort, now that I have seen it - if I can figure out a way to make it work with my flexible keyboard.  From the picture, it looks as though the flex keyboard might be a problem with this one - but if I (or more accurately, hubby) can fix that, this looks like it would work even better than what I have. 

The flexible keyboard is not optional. I have had mine for several years now - all of the frequently used letters have long ago worn off the keys. Good thing I took touch typing in highschool waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when or I would be totally stymied!  Aside from that minor detail, I really, really, really appreciate my keyboard these days. When I bought it, it was because it was fully washable - and since I have issues about having dirty hands I was going through more than my share of keyboards …eventually they would just get so gross that they weren’t worth cleaning any more. As an added bonus, though, the keyboard was MUCH quieter than any I had ever had - so Ross’ complaints about my tippy typing became far less of an issue. He could watch TV and I could be on the computer without the noise driving him nuts. And of course, after I wrecked my wrists (and I already had arthritis in my fingers even before then) the soft silicon keys just became all that much more important.