Day 64: Dictating my book with exercises
After getting all psyched up to do dictation today, I woke up with really bad IBS cramps and spent much of the first half of the day struggling with the pain on and off.
I’m feeling better now but not great. However, even though earlier I found it best not to work if I’m not feeling well, I’m just too antsy about writing my manuscript and I think I’ll at least do the exercises in Fool Proof Dictation, which I had blogged about yesterday. If I’m feeling well enough, I’ll start work dictating the manuscript.
***
I did the reading warmup, which was actually very helpful to get my head in the Regency era of my story. I tend to read too fast—rather than the 5000 words per hour that the book recommends, I read at about 6500 words per hour. I feel like my reading is super slow, but I apparently need to slow down even more.
I also did Exercise #1, and I used the first scene of my Regency serial novel for the exercise rather than the prompt in the book. It was really great for me because the exercise helped me let go of the preconceived notion that dictation has to be exactly like typing, with the words pretty and poetic—and already edited in my head and often even while I’m typing.
The exercise is to basically dictate a short scene using only simple short sentences. Then after you transcribe the recording, you can edit the choppy sentences into pretty sentences. The author gives a longer explanation in the book, including why it’s helpful. I especially like how he suggested this exercise for those days when the writing is difficult, explaining why this works.
The editing will be more labor-intensive, but it really helped me to just focus on the scene in my head, and get the images and ideas out quickly without worrying about the order of events (although I didn’t do very much out of chronological order) or about how I wanted to phrase things. The result is messy but completely edit-able, with all the vital elements I wanted in the scene. My dictation rate is much slower, only 2500 words per hour, but I did that short scene in less than 15 minutes.
I think I’ll try doing the other exercises with my manuscript. If I can let go of the urge to make the rough draft not-rough, I think the writing will go much faster.
***
I did the start of the first scene in volume 2, but then came across a logic problem that I hadn’t seen when I was doing Snowflake step 6 (expanded synopsis) on this book. Although to be honest, I didn’t spend much time outlining the beginning of volume 2 because I had already written some of it. However, I should have just started outlining from scratch since I realized later that what I’d written needed to be cut.
I spent some time dictating to fix the logic problem, and figured it out. But then when I went to transcribe my dictation, Dragon couldn’t transcribe it. The recording had a bunch of feedback that distorted my dictation! Argh! I have a feeling that I didn’t plug the headphone jack in all the way. So now I’ll need to transcribe manually.
I decided to quit while I was feeling frustrated since it probably wouldn’t have made for good writing.
But on a whole, I don’t feel too bad about today. I did lose some time because of my IBS, but the time I spent dictating was helpful to get me back into the mindset of writing and dictating. And I really enjoyed the exercises—I did exercise #1 (from the book) with my serial novel, and exercises #2 and #3 with volume 2. I especially liked exercise #1. It helped free my mindset from the internal editor.
Time spent writing: 1 hour, 51 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: I again forgot to start my Toggl! I have to stop doing that.
My takeaway for today: MAKE SURE THE HEADPHONE JACK IS PLUGGED ALL THE WAY IN.
I’m feeling better now but not great. However, even though earlier I found it best not to work if I’m not feeling well, I’m just too antsy about writing my manuscript and I think I’ll at least do the exercises in Fool Proof Dictation, which I had blogged about yesterday. If I’m feeling well enough, I’ll start work dictating the manuscript.
***
I did the reading warmup, which was actually very helpful to get my head in the Regency era of my story. I tend to read too fast—rather than the 5000 words per hour that the book recommends, I read at about 6500 words per hour. I feel like my reading is super slow, but I apparently need to slow down even more.
I also did Exercise #1, and I used the first scene of my Regency serial novel for the exercise rather than the prompt in the book. It was really great for me because the exercise helped me let go of the preconceived notion that dictation has to be exactly like typing, with the words pretty and poetic—and already edited in my head and often even while I’m typing.
The exercise is to basically dictate a short scene using only simple short sentences. Then after you transcribe the recording, you can edit the choppy sentences into pretty sentences. The author gives a longer explanation in the book, including why it’s helpful. I especially like how he suggested this exercise for those days when the writing is difficult, explaining why this works.
The editing will be more labor-intensive, but it really helped me to just focus on the scene in my head, and get the images and ideas out quickly without worrying about the order of events (although I didn’t do very much out of chronological order) or about how I wanted to phrase things. The result is messy but completely edit-able, with all the vital elements I wanted in the scene. My dictation rate is much slower, only 2500 words per hour, but I did that short scene in less than 15 minutes.
I think I’ll try doing the other exercises with my manuscript. If I can let go of the urge to make the rough draft not-rough, I think the writing will go much faster.
***
I did the start of the first scene in volume 2, but then came across a logic problem that I hadn’t seen when I was doing Snowflake step 6 (expanded synopsis) on this book. Although to be honest, I didn’t spend much time outlining the beginning of volume 2 because I had already written some of it. However, I should have just started outlining from scratch since I realized later that what I’d written needed to be cut.
I spent some time dictating to fix the logic problem, and figured it out. But then when I went to transcribe my dictation, Dragon couldn’t transcribe it. The recording had a bunch of feedback that distorted my dictation! Argh! I have a feeling that I didn’t plug the headphone jack in all the way. So now I’ll need to transcribe manually.
I decided to quit while I was feeling frustrated since it probably wouldn’t have made for good writing.
But on a whole, I don’t feel too bad about today. I did lose some time because of my IBS, but the time I spent dictating was helpful to get me back into the mindset of writing and dictating. And I really enjoyed the exercises—I did exercise #1 (from the book) with my serial novel, and exercises #2 and #3 with volume 2. I especially liked exercise #1. It helped free my mindset from the internal editor.
Time spent writing: 1 hour, 51 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: I again forgot to start my Toggl! I have to stop doing that.
My takeaway for today: MAKE SURE THE HEADPHONE JACK IS PLUGGED ALL THE WAY IN.
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