Let me preface this post by saying that I’m not the only reader who does the following.

When I read fiction, I like to “cast” the book in my mind. That is, I like to assign the character roles, sometimes to people I know who seem to fit the physical descriptions of the characters, and sometimes to professional actors.

For me, this makes reading fiction even more fun than it is to begin with.

Take the Harry Potter series, for example. The real-life eleven-year-old daughter of one of my best friends has long, thick, fiery red hair and a cute face. When I was reading the adventures of Harry and his friends, I assigned my friend’s daughter the role of—you guessed it—Ginny Weasley.

Or take Michael Crichton’s Sphere, which I read many years ago without having seen the movie adaptation. The role of Beth was given by me to one of my biology professors from college. The two just seemed to have the same personality, so why couldn’t they have the same looks? Certainly Beth did not look like Sharon Stone (who played that role on the big screen) in my imagination.

I once read a fiction piece for an online class. I don’t know if the piece was ever published, but it was definitely an interesting story about two stepsisters struggling to make it. The younger stepsister was definitely Kellie Martin in my mind.

What I despise is when a novel is made into a movie and the book cover is replaced with a new one featuring the actors. This takes away the fun of casting the book myself. Crichton’s Disclosure was made into a film which featured Michael Douglas and Demi Moore, and the new book cover featured recognizable images of those actors. I never saw the movie, but I read the novel after it had been released and the cover replaced. Instead of my imagination cooking up appearances for the two lead characters, I pictured Douglas and Moore doing the things that the characters were doing. No fun.

How about you? When you read fiction, do you “cast” the book in your imagination?

If there is one thing editors dislike entirely, it is being distracted while they are trying to work. For editors who work at home like me, distractions can abound more so than at an office. A few weeks ago, I blogged about the vent on the wall right above my desk that rattles and makes white noise. I wish it were the only distraction at home that I must fight.

I never do laundry during the workday. The washer, a modern front-loader, is a blessing to my husband and me for getting our clothes, sheets, and towels clean, but it sits in a utility closet which is right across from the small bedroom that we have turned into our office (i.e., where I work). I can hear it well whether it is filling up with water (loud) or draining (also loud). And the thing can be near deafening during the final spin, depending on how the laundry inside has fallen. Thankfully, it is quiet when it is tumbling. But the sounds tend to make me anxious, no matter how normal they are for the machine.  When I am editing, I do not need extra anxiety.

I also never run the dishwasher during the workday. The dishwasher is another blessing to my husband and me, and unlike the clothes washer, it runs quietly—no louder than our refrigerator. So why does it distract me? Because even while I am editing, the very back of my mind hears the soft cadence of its water swishing and the sucking sounds it makes while it is draining. If any of these noises suddenly start to sound abnormal, I panic, for it must mean that something is wrong with the dishwasher. And then I need to stop my Toggl timer before running out to the kitchen—and Heaven help me if I forget to stop the timer. (The dishwasher—though it is a blessing—was installed incorrectly in 2018 and we did not learn of this until 2021. If I step too hard on the floor near it, it sometimes stops in midcycle.)

If you work at home, what are some of your biggest distractions?

For three days, my husband and I could not breathe, eat, or drink.

That is an exaggeration. What happened was that we did not have internet (lowercase “i” according to The Chicago Manual of Style) service for three days.

Years ago, when I had a Facebook account, I read the following meme in my feed: Our generation is better prepared for a zombie apocalypse than an hour without electricity. This meme is terribly true and would have been even truer had its ending read …an hour without electricity or internet service.

No internet means no email. Email is my favorite method of communication. Yes, I also text and make the occasional telephone call, but since I love to write, I prefer to email. Often, my emails to my friends are extremely long, and I wonder if any of them are thinking, “TL;DR.” (“Too long; didn’t read” for those unfamiliar with social media acronyms.) But I love to write emails, for it is that mode of contact that lets me express myself the most eloquently.

No internet also means no YouTube. I know that YouTube is the video sharing platform of our grandparents and that I “should” be using TikTok, but YouTube contains many wonderful music mixes which I love to put on when I do household chores on the weekends. Not to mention that YouTube also has many of my beloved commercials from the past, like the 2003 Miller Beer ad where the people are falling like dominoes.

And, of course, no internet means no getting information. I needed a certain phone number last Friday that I could only obtain from the company’s website. Needless to say that I couldn’t get the phone number. Sigh.

So who was the culprit who stole our internet service?

At first the phone agent at our cable company thought it was the modem that had died, but we reached out to a tech-savvy friend of ours who came over, ran a diagnostic, and said it was the router that was dead. The last three days included two trips to the electronics store, three long calls with our cable company, and two calls to product manufacturers.

But…lo and behold, we have internet service again. Hooray!

What is the longest you have been without internet service? What did you do to get by during that time?

Let’s hear it for white noise!

I am being sarcastic.

If you are not familiar with the term “white noise,” here is the “b” definition from the free online version of Merriam-Webster: “a constant background noise, especially one that drowns out other sounds.”

I often have white noise in my office—and not by choice. It is in the form of a heat/air conditioning vent which is in the wall some four feet directly above my work desk. Unlike the other vents in my condo, which blow air quietly, this one is so loud that it can be heard from my living room.

This vent also rattles as it blows air. It has done so since before my husband and I moved here. It is doing so at the very moment that I type these words. I am very glad that we made this room an office and not a guest bedroom.

Since I have to edit and do other work right below this noisy thing, you might be asking how I deal with it. Well, I have a few methods.

First, when the heat or AC starts and the vent starts blowing and rattling, I quickly remind myself that white noise is not the worst sound in the world. I would much rather hear it than, for example, a baby crying, a dog barking, a blender whirring, or (gulp) my smoke alarm screaming. Right after I give myself this reminder, I can quickly focus on work again.

Second, I emphasize the positive. The white noise drowns out other, more unnerving sounds that I often hear while I am home, such as the grounds crew using their leaf blowers or the three young children shrieking in the one unit near ours. (The latter should be the subject of another whole post.)

When I am home alone at night, I hear the white noise even when I am not working, and this is when I find it creepy. This brings me to the third method of dealing with the noise. I imagine that it is the ocean. It does somewhat sound like the waves. I love the ocean and the beach, so this is very therapeutic.

Some people love white noise and cannot work or sleep without it. How about you? Do you love or hate white noise?

When it comes to commands on Word, some prefer to hit keys on their keyboard, such as Ctrl + S to save a document. Others prefer to move the mouse pointer to an icon on their toolbar and click.

I am one of the latter, but I am becoming one of the former.

Using keyboard shortcuts undoubtedly saves time and is more efficient, and what editor does not want to be more efficient in their work? I have gotten into the habit of pressing Ctrl + S when I want to save a document and Ctrl + N when I want to start a new document, for example. Standard built-in Word commands are also incredibly helpful for placing text in bold, italic, and underline, and especially for copying (or cutting) and pasting. (I won’t bore you by listing all of keyboard shortcuts for those actions. Besides, you probably know them all.)

The habit I am trying to break involves using my mouse to navigate the pointer to the command icon and then clicking on the left button on the mouse. This is a habit worth breaking because it uses more time and is hard on the wrist. I have heard of people developing wrist pain from using a mouse over time. I am in no way saying that a mouse should never be used; it is a very necessary tool. (Unless you are using the touchpad on your laptop and if you are, I say, “Better you than me.”)

One of the many reasons why I took the EFA’s class in macros last year is so that I could learn keyboard shortcut commands for different actions in Word. These keyboard shortcuts have proven to be wonderfully useful. For example, I can change the words “two hundred” to the numeral “200” simply by placing the cursor anywhere before “two hundred” and pressing Ctrl + Alt + T. I can also place the article “the” before a word by placing the cursor in the word and pressing Ctrl + Alt + A. Can you imagine how much I would have to move the mouse around in order to perform these actions?

Are you a mouse person or a keyboard person? Why?