Day 507: Dictation day 2 went a little better
Dealing with more health issues
Today started off very badly because I woke up with a sinus headache. I can usually get work done even if I have IBS issues unless they are very bad, but working with a headache is almost impossible. Whenever I have tried, every single time the headache only gets worse and turns into a full-blown migraine.
Ironically, my energy levels are rather good today, probably because my IBS has been better for a few days and so it doesn’t make me tired. Which made it doubly frustrating that I couldn’t spend much time at my computer.
So I brought out the big guns (strong drugs). Once they kicked in, I decided to try dictating my fiction.
Dictation: reduce resistance
What I’ve discovered with dictation (and which really should have been obvious to me) is that I need to set up my equipment so that it’s very easy for me to just get started. If I have to bother to do something even as small as plug in my microphone or open a recording app, it’s just that little bit of resistance that makes me procrastinate just that little extra bit of time.
So after doing the dictation today, I left the microphone plugged in. However, I couldn’t keep the recording app open because I had to close pretty much all my other apps in order to run Dragon on my computer, since I have so little RAM.
Transcribing the recording didn’t take much time, but I had to retrain my Dragon profile with a few words it kept making mistakes on. I had been using Dragon on another computer with more memory before, but it had a battery problem and I hadn’t copied over the Dragon profiles before shutting it down. So I had to create a brand new profile when I downloaded Dragon on this computer. I suppose I could fire up the other computer just to be able to transfer over the Dragon profiles (assuming I could actually find out where it is), but I decided to just do a new profile since I was having issues with Dragon on this computer already.
Anyway, training Dragon took a bit of time, but the editing didn’t actually take that much time today. I hadn’t bothered to dictate the quotation marks this time, and while it does make for more work when editing, it makes it a lot easier to dictate if I don’t bother with them, so I think I’ll continue leaving them out when I dictate.
My writing speed when dictating was a bit higher than yesterday, but I deleted about a third of the words I dictated. With the increased editing time, I’m still pretty sure my writing speed is about the same or slower than when I type.
But dictating was a little bit easier today than it was yesterday. It definitely helped that I didn’t have a daily word count I was aiming for. I’m still focusing on blocking the novel and doing only a little writing every day, so I just intended to do about 15 minutes of dictation today.
I also was expecting the editing to take a long time because, well, dictation. That way I can be pleasantly surprised if it takes less time, and if it takes as long as I was expecting, it’s not a disappointment, at least.
It’s definitely less pressure on myself that I’m not focusing on writing prose at this time and only focusing on blocking/outlining. That might be making the dictation a bit easier, mentally.
I’m starting to feel a bit better so I think I’ll work on blocking book 4 after dinner.
***
Maybe I need a blocking streak
I hadn’t done any blocking for a few days, so it took a while for me to get back into the blocking. I actually got a bit confused and had to reread some of my old blocking notes. I compare this with the prose writing, where I was able to dive right back in because I never took a break from it. I wonder if I need to try to do some blocking every day, too, so that I don’t forget what I was doing. However, I don’t really feel like doing a streak like with my prose writing, especially since I’m giving up the email streak (see below).
I did about 45 minutes of blocking, but then the sinus headache started coming back and getting a lot worse, so I stopped.
Giving up the email/social media streak
I think I just don’t feel the urgency of keeping up with my email enough to keep a streak. I’ll still try to do it everyday—I have a check box in my bullet journal for my email and social media every day, so I’ll have a checkbox to check off when I do it.
I honestly feel like I have too many streaks to keep track of. I think I’ll just keep the prose writing streak for now.
***
Writing: Time spent: 20 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 806 words
Writing: Overall writing speed: 2422 words/hour
Writing streak: 20 days
Editing: Time spent: 46 minutes
Blocking: time spent: 53 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 0
My takeaway for today: Reduce resistance to doing dictation so you don’t procrastinate.
My second takeaway for today: The lack of a word count goal for each day takes the pressure off when I do dictation for my book.
Today started off very badly because I woke up with a sinus headache. I can usually get work done even if I have IBS issues unless they are very bad, but working with a headache is almost impossible. Whenever I have tried, every single time the headache only gets worse and turns into a full-blown migraine.
Ironically, my energy levels are rather good today, probably because my IBS has been better for a few days and so it doesn’t make me tired. Which made it doubly frustrating that I couldn’t spend much time at my computer.
So I brought out the big guns (strong drugs). Once they kicked in, I decided to try dictating my fiction.
Dictation: reduce resistance
What I’ve discovered with dictation (and which really should have been obvious to me) is that I need to set up my equipment so that it’s very easy for me to just get started. If I have to bother to do something even as small as plug in my microphone or open a recording app, it’s just that little bit of resistance that makes me procrastinate just that little extra bit of time.
So after doing the dictation today, I left the microphone plugged in. However, I couldn’t keep the recording app open because I had to close pretty much all my other apps in order to run Dragon on my computer, since I have so little RAM.
Transcribing the recording didn’t take much time, but I had to retrain my Dragon profile with a few words it kept making mistakes on. I had been using Dragon on another computer with more memory before, but it had a battery problem and I hadn’t copied over the Dragon profiles before shutting it down. So I had to create a brand new profile when I downloaded Dragon on this computer. I suppose I could fire up the other computer just to be able to transfer over the Dragon profiles (assuming I could actually find out where it is), but I decided to just do a new profile since I was having issues with Dragon on this computer already.
Anyway, training Dragon took a bit of time, but the editing didn’t actually take that much time today. I hadn’t bothered to dictate the quotation marks this time, and while it does make for more work when editing, it makes it a lot easier to dictate if I don’t bother with them, so I think I’ll continue leaving them out when I dictate.
My writing speed when dictating was a bit higher than yesterday, but I deleted about a third of the words I dictated. With the increased editing time, I’m still pretty sure my writing speed is about the same or slower than when I type.
But dictating was a little bit easier today than it was yesterday. It definitely helped that I didn’t have a daily word count I was aiming for. I’m still focusing on blocking the novel and doing only a little writing every day, so I just intended to do about 15 minutes of dictation today.
I also was expecting the editing to take a long time because, well, dictation. That way I can be pleasantly surprised if it takes less time, and if it takes as long as I was expecting, it’s not a disappointment, at least.
It’s definitely less pressure on myself that I’m not focusing on writing prose at this time and only focusing on blocking/outlining. That might be making the dictation a bit easier, mentally.
I’m starting to feel a bit better so I think I’ll work on blocking book 4 after dinner.
***
Maybe I need a blocking streak
I hadn’t done any blocking for a few days, so it took a while for me to get back into the blocking. I actually got a bit confused and had to reread some of my old blocking notes. I compare this with the prose writing, where I was able to dive right back in because I never took a break from it. I wonder if I need to try to do some blocking every day, too, so that I don’t forget what I was doing. However, I don’t really feel like doing a streak like with my prose writing, especially since I’m giving up the email streak (see below).
I did about 45 minutes of blocking, but then the sinus headache started coming back and getting a lot worse, so I stopped.
Giving up the email/social media streak
I think I just don’t feel the urgency of keeping up with my email enough to keep a streak. I’ll still try to do it everyday—I have a check box in my bullet journal for my email and social media every day, so I’ll have a checkbox to check off when I do it.
I honestly feel like I have too many streaks to keep track of. I think I’ll just keep the prose writing streak for now.
***
Writing: Time spent: 20 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 806 words
Writing: Overall writing speed: 2422 words/hour
Writing streak: 20 days
Editing: Time spent: 46 minutes
Blocking: time spent: 53 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 0
My takeaway for today: Reduce resistance to doing dictation so you don’t procrastinate.
My second takeaway for today: The lack of a word count goal for each day takes the pressure off when I do dictation for my book.
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