Author Archives: D.M. Gutierrez

September 2020 Already? Have I met my writing goals?

I haven’t posted anything since 2017. So many things have happened across the world since then (most of them bad), but I am not going to talk about them. Enough has been tweeted and Instagrammed and Facebooked to fill the Library of Congress 100 times over.

But I will talk about my writing.

My writing is…going nowhere. I can’t blame this on my vision. I have so many gadgets and apps to help me out with that. No, I just have not been working on any of my WIPs because of my other disability—perfectionism.

Perfectionism is an evil little imp that torments me when I get close to finishing a project. “What if this has all been for nothing?” it howls. “What is the point of writing something no one will read? You can’t get anything published if you don’t have an agent, and what agent will be interested in this drivel? Write the opening over (for the 20th time), slant the story a little bit this way, wait, no that way. Run it through twelve more beta readers. Or just give up, your writing will never be good enough, never…”

And though I struggle to shut out that imp, to clap my hands over my ears to keep out its incessant harangue, I end up listening. Listening and yielding, regressing to TV watching, book reading, sleeping, and distracting myself with something new. All my works in progress—New Mexico Heat, Dandy’s Dragon, Sylvellin Sending, Vermin, and many others—languish in a dimly lit corner. From time to time they pick at me, reaching out undernourished fingers to pluck my sleeve. “Come back to us, we need your help, come back to us and make us complete. Free us, release us into the bright light!”

Waah, waah, waah, I have to laugh at myself! What a load of BS. Dramatizing my indolent fear of failing like it’s a Grimm fairy tale might be entertaining, but it will get me nowhere fast!

So, I have started re-reading The Artist Way, reading through old Morning Pages, noting how many things I HAVE accomplished since 2006 when I first moved to New Mexico and started all these projects. I will, as I always have, get back on that horse and eventually, gradually triumph!

At least I will move forward. Let me pick one project and focus on that for one month. But which one?

Hmm, of course it needs to be the perfect choice. Right? Right?

Sigh…

And a year later…2017

by  D.M. Gutierrez

So much has happened since my last post in 2016, mostly terrible things, but a few good ones.  I won’t talk about the terrible ones here (many of you probably shared some of them), so here are some of the good things.

All of these are on the technology front.

I discovered Alexa!

Echo, Dot, Tap

I cannot sing the praises of  the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Tap enough. They have added so much to my days and nights.  The main reason I bought my first one was to listen to Kindle books.

Alexa reads them out loud and she has a pretty good reading voice, tone, inflection.  Not as good as most human readers, but much, much better than the text-to-speech readers I have seen over the years (though ZoomText is also great at reading). But Alexa can do so much more than that.

I got a Jitterbug Smart!

I’m sure I was way behind the curve on this one.  Almost everyone I knew had some kind of smartphone. I knew I had to join the club. After dithering about which smartphone I should get, doing endless research, and getting nowhere, I was pleasantly surprised to get one in the mail, a gift from my ever-practical and decisive boyfriend.  The Jitterbug Smart was a big improvement over the dumb cell phone I had been using.  So many accessibility features and so many Android apps out there to help me do what I need to do!  Like the Read It To Me app that reads my incoming texts aloud, Google Voice Search, traveling directions aloud.

I traded in my Windows 10 tablet for an Android tablet.

I got a Windows 10 tablet last year and used it a little.  But the accessibility features were not as good as the ones on my Android phone, so I traded it in for an Android tablet. Great improvement!

I bought a Google Home!

My boyfriend rolled his eyes when he herd I had added to my collection of talking and listening gadgets. Though the Home is not as attractive as the Echo (it looks kind of like an air freshener!), it has some features Alexa doesn’t, like weather features like wind speed and humidity. I’m sure Alexa will catch up before long. One disadvantage is that the Home doesn’t read Audible books or play music without a 3rd-party music source.

The addition of all these smart devices are exciting, and a great promise for future developments. I can’t wait to see what Google and Amazon roll out over time.

Now for Writing progress…

Well, I didn’t do any of the things in my 2016 Hopes and Dreams post. Political dramas and life tragedies shoved all those intentions out of the way. I intend to take them all up in 2018 though, so check back.

Ain’t Technology Grand? Assistive Devices for the Vision-Impaired Writer

Reblogged from Crackin’ the WIP

by    D.M. Gutierrez

Since I talked about my vision impairment last week, I thought I’d expand on the topic a little. Some of you might be wondering how I write or read or critique. Well, there are a lot of assistive devices out there, and they sure have improved over the years. I’ll show you the ones I use, and maybe, if you know someone who has impaired vision and isn’t already aware of these world-expanding tools, you can pass along the information.

Continue reading →

Welcome, Readers!

by     D.M. Gutierrez

As some of you know, I’ve been participating in a multi-authored writing blog, CrackinTheWIP, for a while  now. One of my most popular posts was on the adaptive technology I use to write fiction, non-fiction, poetry and songs.  I’m going to re-blog it here and add other posts about being a writer/poet/songwriter who happens to be vision-impaired.  My hope is that other creative people will join me both as readers and as guest bloggers.  The world needs to see all the talent, energy, and enthusiasm out there!

 

Please pass on the link to this blog to anyone you know who might have an interest in writing of all kinds and those who might contribute to knowledge about vision impairments, the technology that can be useful, the emotional, mental, and physical challenges of having low or no vision, and any other topic that seem relevant to the community of readers I hope to engage with.

I will be publishing a new post every Monday, so keep an eye out!  If you subscribe to the blog, you’ll receive a reminder email when a new post is published.

 

Thanks for reading 🙂