[stylist] Excited to have my first novella published!

[Jackie Williams]

April,
Your persistence in the face of confusion and disillusion with the
accessibility software is a great lesson for all of us. Particularly me. I
used to have a Mac twenty years ago when    I had my vision. It was a
wonderful gift that allowed me to publish five of my mother's books. When
forced to use a P C with Windows when so much software was needed in my
teaching career, I had a terrible time making the change.  I had state
training  pre Windows XP, and hobbled along with my poetry. Now with the
upgrade to Windows 7, Office 10, etc. everything ends up somewhere not
intended, and my Jaws 15 will not read many things. I rehired my state
teacher on my own on a budget breaker salary, and she could not get many
things to work right. Finally, after an eight month wait, I qualified for  a
state teacher with no cost to me. He is a marvelous teacher, totally blind,
and explains things conceptually so that I have a chance of understanding
how things  are put together.
He also finds many things that are inexplicable, but he is researching the
settings, and I have faith that, given a few months, I may make sense of all
of Donna's lessons in self-publishing, and learn to access other things she
talks about. I have only had two lessons with him so far. His wife drives
him to my home, and sometimes translates because he has the Indian
pronunciation, and my hearing problem is severe. We manage.
With your persistence and one big success, I know you will keep moving
ahead. Sincere congratulations. 

Jackie Lee

Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz	 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of April Brown
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2014 3:38 AM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: [stylist] Excited to have my first novella published!

Good morning.

I am so excited to have my first novella published.

For the last year plus, I have struggled with trying to get training to help
me through my vision loss.  I tried various screenreaders on Windows.  They
bogged it down so bad that I couldn't even check my mail.  And I never did
manage to figure out how to get one to work.

So in December I bought a Mac, since I was told VoiceOver was easy and
intuitive.  Five months later, and I still can't duplicate any set of
instructions I have written down.

It is too complex, and I can't duplicate directions the following day no
matter what I do.  And there are no step by step manuals.  Lots of "Rah!
Rah! You can do it!" No steps.   Yeah, I know how to turn it off and on.
That's the only command that mostly works.

    I was concerned about Monday and preparing my novella for Smashwords and
Amazon.  

After all, if I can't figure out how to use a basic screen reader that any
blind person with no computer training can use without thinking, how could I
ever hope to do something so complex as publish a novella?

    How much trouble did I have?

    I had to try a second time with the cover for Smashwords.

    That was it.  It was a breeze otherwise.  Less than two hours. And that
counted the time to reformat based on Amazon's directions.

    What does that say about me?



April Brown

Writing dramatic adventure novels uncovering the myths we hide behind.

aprilbrownwrite at gmail.com

Website: https://sites.google.com/site/uncoveredmyths/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/UncoveredMyths
Google Plus:  https://plus.google.com/116003267969710767555/posts

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