Typing... re-typing

I always knew that touch-typing course I did at college would come in useful one day.

I wanted to nominate a story for the Watery Grave Invitational crime writing contest, to try to get myself on their list of invitees. When I came to look at my list of published stories only one met the bill, Lemon Sour which was published in Radgepacket 4. And I realised that I didn't have a copy on my laptop, or on the flash drive that I dash around the country with and never leave home without. In fact, the only copy I had was in a volume of the book that I'd brought with me to read months ago and popped back on a shelf.

So, I rolled up my sleeves and set to work... to re-type the whole blinking story. Luckily it's only around 1800 words long so it could have been worse, but it still took me a couple of hours. Not least because I had to keep picking up the book, reading the next sentence, memorising it, putting the book down again to free my hands up to type, typing, then picking the book up again.... A long and frustrating process, but the submission went off to Watery Grave at lunchtime, well in time for the May 15th deadline. Now I just watch and wait. And thank the Lord that I learned to type at speed with all ten fingers and thumbs. If I'd still been using the old prod-and-poke method and two fingers, I'd have been at it all day!