Yes, I had to relearn how to type. I’m still not up to my pre-switch 90 wpm, but I’m close (I do tech support so often have to use other people’s keyboards. It slows down the learning process not being in a ‘pure’ environment). Despite the hassle, it has helped with the pain, and that was the goal.

Exercise and ergonomics are extremely important to being a writer. In fact, I will be doing a talk on those things at an upcoming SCBWI meeting in my area and hoping maybe to springboard that into a series of articles or a few segments at a larger conference.

Hope you can make it out next time you’re in San Francisco.

And thanks for all your tips. I went past the 50K mark this morning! Woohoo!

Also, if you order it by mail, you can have a solid 15 minutes of hilarity with your mail carrier joking about it, because it looks like something a dominatrix would put on her Christmas list. Enjoy!

It’s been a year of massages, chiropractor visits, yoga, new chairs…I am slowly getting better and sitting straighter, but I wrote my second book with voice recognition software and will probably write the next couple that way too…

But oh well… Hopefully, we’ll all find ways to deal with our bodies.

Good luck!

wandering-dreamer: You’re making me very nervous. Hope you’ll forgive me for giving you further advice and a warning. I didn’t start to develop really bad probs until my late 20s early 30s. I was quite cavalier about all of this as a teenager. I wish I hadn’t been. I wish I’d developed these good habits a lot earlier. It would have saved me worlds of pain.

If your wrists are already hurting you might want to invest in something like these laptop wrist pads. But you really shouldn’t be hunched over a laptop for any amount of time. You’ll pay later. Trust me on this.

Painkillers do pretty much nothing for my backaches either. My general regimen includes hot pads and whining a whole lot until the pain goes away, but your “not sitting hunched over your computer” thing sounds like it might be worth trying out. For a while I was wearing a corset while I sewed to enforce good posture. I wonder if it would help at all at the computer.

Yes, eating regularly is also a good tip.

I definitely agree about good posture/ergonomics while writing. I both write *and* sew, which is a great way to get on the fast track to a bad back. Mine is killing me right now, and I suspect it’s because I was leaning over a cutting table all afternoon and am now hunched over my netbook.

I’ve also had good results with keeping healthy trail mix (no candy!) at my desk. Sometimes I get so distracted with writing that I forget to eat–which makes bad things happen to my blood sugar, and worse things happen to my writing >_<.

So, I’m not glad other writers suffer, but I’m glad to know it’s not just me? Because this past year and a half, when I started writing “full time” (I quit my job and took a part-time gig instead so I could put in at least 20-30 hrs of writing a week) I started feeling extreme pain in my wrists and occasionally my neck, and it scared me. Knowing I’m not alone makes it less scary.

(Also learning about what I can do to prevent it, which I’ve gotten much better at!)

Anyway, thanks for the encouragement as always! And I look forward to the day that I can justify weekly massages, hehehe.

Stupid dusting. Stupid timer. *glower*

So, anyway, I don’t use the timer anymore.

And cupping looks painful. Like being attacked by a squid. Does it really help?

~Mary