This is about my Work In Progress not whips.This is not that sort of blog. So I’m steaming along on my new thang and feeling pretty good about my 25,000 words or so, and my generally-outlined next few chapters, but I was getting sort of bored staring at the words on the screen. Not because of what they said, mind you, but something about how they stood out against the luminescent white of the screen. They looked jumbled and messy, like there were too many of them and not exactly in the best order and it was making my brain even more tired than my eyes. And then I had an idea. My writer friend who will forthwith be known as WF told me that once when she was working on a noir sort of detective story she changed the font on her computer to something that looked like an old manual typewriter. Not cool enough to have missing keys or lighter impressions of letters where the finger doesn’t strike as hard, but still pretty nifty. She said it put her in the mood, and I totally get that. Like if I ever write a regency romance I could use a flowery font or maybe something that looks like fine copperplate hand-writing (if they make one like that.)
So I thought about fonts I like and I chose Verdana which has a strong but regular sort of look about it. I’m usually boring and just stick with Times New Roman which is the set-up the computer arrives with, but Verdana is what I used to use to blog with until the day I forgot to switch over.
So now I’m looking at my WIP and the letters are bold and sharp and they seem blacker than they used to be and I like how they show up on the page. It lends them an importance and for some reason (psychological though it may be) I feel, as I do a quick edit of the first 6 chapters, that when I strike something or add a paragraph or change a word here or there, the font is showing me that I’ve chosen correctly. The words on the screen look good next to each other.
Oh and the other thing is that Verdana takes up more space, so that with a click of the mouse I’ve increased my page count from 73 to 97 and that just gives me energy and heart and faith that this will be a book, by golly!
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