Day 158: Visual stimuli; ideas to improve dictation
I got a late start today and woke up with a bit of a headache. I’ve taken medicine, so hopefully it’ll work soon.
***
I discovered something that kind of puts me in my happy place for my writing. Months ago I ordered some gemstone bracelets from Hong Kong but because of the mail system, I didn’t get them until yesterday.
I bought them because they looked pretty, not because I believe in the properties of gemstones. But I did notice that having them on my wrist and looking at them once in a while makes me very happy. They are colors I like, and especially the strawberry quartz is beautiful with little flecks of gold, so they are visually stimulating for me when usually all I look at is the computer screen.
Also, since I tend to be a tactile creator, touching the bracelets every so often is rather soothing. Since I am a tactile creator, it had never occurred to me that some type of visual stimulation might help me with my writing, but I guess it certainly doesn’t hurt!
***
After I wrote the above, my Freewrite Traveler arrived! Yay! I’m so excited to start using it except that I have to edit volume 2 first! Aaargh! Well, I suppose it will make me do the edits faster, maybe?
***
Okay, after writing the above, I realized my Traveler cannot connect to a hidden WiFi network, which is what my house has. If it can, I don’t know how and I’ve Googled to no avail. I’ve emailed Astrohaus so maybe they’ll be able to help me.
Well, that’s disappointing. I can connect my Traveler to my computer to access the files, so it’s not completely unusable. But not being able to connect to my home WiFi is troubling.
***
I did some editing today although it’s slow going. Some of these chapters were done using dictation, so the prose is a mess.
I think part of the problem is that with dictation, I can’t see what I just said and have to rely on my memory. When doing the editing, I realized that I repeat myself a lot, and also ramble quite a bit.
I thought about that, and I could do dictation directly into Dragon because then I could see what I’m dictating on the screen. That might help reduce some of the repetition and rambling, although the writing pace would be slower than when dictating into a digital recorder. But it might be better prose and cleaner copy.
I’ve tried some of the dictation exercises in Fool Proof Dictation: A No-Nonsense System for Effective & Rewarding Dictation (Fool Proof Writer Book 2). I really liked his entire premise that you don’t need to dictate the scene entirely in one go—you can dictate it several times and then compile each time into a scene that contains everything you wanted to say.
The book freed me from the misconception that I have to dictate perfectly (well, duh!), and that it’s acceptable to repeat something a few times to get it the way I want it. Dictation is so fast that it you can repeat an entire scene in the same or even less time it would take to type it just once.
However, my personal problem with self-editing makes the editing part a real nightmare. Collecting all the different pieces from two or three passes through a scene and editing it into the finished scene is just hard for me.
So dictating directly into Dragon might be a happy medium. I don’t care much for dictating a scene in several passes, like the book does, but I could dictate a sentence or paragraph several times until I say exactly what I want to say. I wouldn’t edit in Dragon, but if I didn’t like what I just said, I’d just repeat it the way I wanted or say something else.
Of course it’s terrible that I’m blogging about dictation right after I got my Freewrite Traveler! But I haven’t started using it yet since I’m still editing, so I’ll save another blog post for my experiences with it later. (If you’re interested, the above link is an affiliate link that will give you a 5% discount from Freewrite/Astrohaus.)
***
I’m still having issues with procrastinating because I don’t want to do the self-editing! It’s become worse now that I’ve gotten to a few scenes that I did with dictation, and so the editing is heavier than normal.
As I did when I was procrastinating the writing, I’ll have to try some of the tricks I thought of. So I set a timer for 90 minutes, and I have lots of snacks. I had also forgotten about my positive self-talk, so I’ll do that before I get back to work.
I also admit that I’m feeling antsy because I’d rather be writing and defeating monsters on 4thewords.com! But maybe it’s just that I’d rather do anything more than self-editing.
***
I got some editing done, and I think I will continue and edit a little more, but since it is after midnight, I am going to post my time for today here, and any extra hours I’ll add to tomorrow’s totals.
Editing: Time spent: 3 hours, 15 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 36 minutes (I forgot to start Toggl when I checked my email)
My takeaway for today: Even though I am a tactile creator, the visual stimuli of my pretty bracelets puts me in a happy mood for work.
My second takeaway for today: Since I repeat myself and ramble when I dictate into a digital recorder, it might be cleaner copy if I dictate directly into Dragon, even though my writing pace will be slower.
***
I bought them because they looked pretty, not because I believe in the properties of gemstones. But I did notice that having them on my wrist and looking at them once in a while makes me very happy. They are colors I like, and especially the strawberry quartz is beautiful with little flecks of gold, so they are visually stimulating for me when usually all I look at is the computer screen.
Also, since I tend to be a tactile creator, touching the bracelets every so often is rather soothing. Since I am a tactile creator, it had never occurred to me that some type of visual stimulation might help me with my writing, but I guess it certainly doesn’t hurt!
***
After I wrote the above, my Freewrite Traveler arrived! Yay! I’m so excited to start using it except that I have to edit volume 2 first! Aaargh! Well, I suppose it will make me do the edits faster, maybe?
***
Okay, after writing the above, I realized my Traveler cannot connect to a hidden WiFi network, which is what my house has. If it can, I don’t know how and I’ve Googled to no avail. I’ve emailed Astrohaus so maybe they’ll be able to help me.
Well, that’s disappointing. I can connect my Traveler to my computer to access the files, so it’s not completely unusable. But not being able to connect to my home WiFi is troubling.
***
I did some editing today although it’s slow going. Some of these chapters were done using dictation, so the prose is a mess.
I think part of the problem is that with dictation, I can’t see what I just said and have to rely on my memory. When doing the editing, I realized that I repeat myself a lot, and also ramble quite a bit.
I thought about that, and I could do dictation directly into Dragon because then I could see what I’m dictating on the screen. That might help reduce some of the repetition and rambling, although the writing pace would be slower than when dictating into a digital recorder. But it might be better prose and cleaner copy.
I’ve tried some of the dictation exercises in Fool Proof Dictation: A No-Nonsense System for Effective & Rewarding Dictation (Fool Proof Writer Book 2). I really liked his entire premise that you don’t need to dictate the scene entirely in one go—you can dictate it several times and then compile each time into a scene that contains everything you wanted to say.
The book freed me from the misconception that I have to dictate perfectly (well, duh!), and that it’s acceptable to repeat something a few times to get it the way I want it. Dictation is so fast that it you can repeat an entire scene in the same or even less time it would take to type it just once.
However, my personal problem with self-editing makes the editing part a real nightmare. Collecting all the different pieces from two or three passes through a scene and editing it into the finished scene is just hard for me.
So dictating directly into Dragon might be a happy medium. I don’t care much for dictating a scene in several passes, like the book does, but I could dictate a sentence or paragraph several times until I say exactly what I want to say. I wouldn’t edit in Dragon, but if I didn’t like what I just said, I’d just repeat it the way I wanted or say something else.
Of course it’s terrible that I’m blogging about dictation right after I got my Freewrite Traveler! But I haven’t started using it yet since I’m still editing, so I’ll save another blog post for my experiences with it later. (If you’re interested, the above link is an affiliate link that will give you a 5% discount from Freewrite/Astrohaus.)
***
I’m still having issues with procrastinating because I don’t want to do the self-editing! It’s become worse now that I’ve gotten to a few scenes that I did with dictation, and so the editing is heavier than normal.
As I did when I was procrastinating the writing, I’ll have to try some of the tricks I thought of. So I set a timer for 90 minutes, and I have lots of snacks. I had also forgotten about my positive self-talk, so I’ll do that before I get back to work.
I also admit that I’m feeling antsy because I’d rather be writing and defeating monsters on 4thewords.com! But maybe it’s just that I’d rather do anything more than self-editing.
***
I got some editing done, and I think I will continue and edit a little more, but since it is after midnight, I am going to post my time for today here, and any extra hours I’ll add to tomorrow’s totals.
Editing: Time spent: 3 hours, 15 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 36 minutes (I forgot to start Toggl when I checked my email)
My takeaway for today: Even though I am a tactile creator, the visual stimuli of my pretty bracelets puts me in a happy mood for work.
My second takeaway for today: Since I repeat myself and ramble when I dictate into a digital recorder, it might be cleaner copy if I dictate directly into Dragon, even though my writing pace will be slower.
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