There's this little thing called "ergonomics" which is basically about the relationship between the human body and your work environment. If you were ever in a high school band, you might link this to when your music teacher yelled at you to "sit up straight!" and "don't play out of the side of your mouth." Or perhaps you've never even heard of ergonomics, which is probably due to the fact that most people don't really care. It's kind of one of those things where hindsight is 20/20, because apparently you can ruin parts of your body just by typing wrong, but you won't know it until way after the fact. Allow me to illustrate this point...
Proper posture looks like this:
 |
| I think you mean, "write a sentence every 30 minutes." |
 |
| At least I'm drinking water today. |
Apparently there are other really important things to do/not do when you're an author. Like not forgetting important words in a sentence. Example:
"You probably hate my guts now, don't you?" he asked teasingly.
"No," she laughed. "I do hate your guts."
"HA HAHAHA HAHA WAIT... what?"
Verb tenses! Don't mix up verb tenses. Not even in a query letter...
So he asks me, "Do you hate my guts now?"
"No," I said and laughed. "I do not hate your guts."
"So then, the characters will find out that they've switched bodies. And then after that, they tried to find a way to switch back. But now, they're stuck."
(I know it's subtle, but also incredibly annoying.)
So now you know - some things to keep in mind while you write.
- Natasja
