Camy's Writing Diary

My thoughts on the dictation so far: This is the third or fourth time I'm trying dictation. The past times I have tried this, I read lots of dictation books, so this time I know which books I found most useful and can re-read them. That has helped me to refresh my memory about the most important and useful tips and techniques for dictation. I think that because I tried dictation before, even though I quit, the experience of trying dictation and practicing it seems to have been useful. The first day I did dictation this time (a week ago), it was terrible and awful. I wasn't used to hearing my voice talking out loud to myself, and it felt awkward both physically and mentally. My brain simply didn't think in the right way to be able to dictate anything, whether it was a blog post or fiction. This was exactly the same as the other times I tried dictation. Starting out was terrible and awful. The other times I tried dictation, I can't really say that I dictated that mu...

I once again got a late start because of IBS, but it was because I overslept. The IBS pain made it difficult for me to sleep well last night, and so this morning I turned off my alarm and went back to sleep. I feel better now, although my IBS is still bothering me a little bit. When I decided to simplify my writing day, I stopped writing 100 words on my Hawaii book every day, and instead decided to do my Hawaii book one day a week. At first I did it on Thursdays since I tend to have a lot of house chores on that day, but recently I decided to switch it to Saturdays because I found that I tend to have more interruptions to my afternoons on Saturdays. I can get away with writing fewer words on my Hawaii book since I’m only writing a chapter (about 3000 words) a month, and my day’s word count goal is only about 750 words, so having less writing time on Saturdays won’t impact my writing goal for the day. When working on my Hawaii book, some chapters are entirely new writing, but some c...

I started re-reading another dictation book, Fool Proof Dictation: A No-Nonsense System for Effective & Rewarding Dictation by Christopher Downing. It doesn’t offer as much practical advice for beginning dictating authors like Monica Leonelle’s book Dictate Your Book: How To Write Your Book Faster, Better, and Smarter , but the advice he does give is spot on, at least for me. His first drill (he calls them Tryouts) is to read out loud a passage in exactly 2 minutes, 15 seconds. The reason is because that would be a reading pace of 5000 words per hour. It was really amazing to me how slow that seemed, and yet that was 5000 words per hour. He suggests getting your body used to that dictation speed because it gives you good accuracy on Dragon, or whatever speed you end up liking best that gives you good accuracy. I especially like how he does several warm-up exercises before he even starts dictating his fiction. He writes, “I learned that revving up my brain before I dictate scen...

I guess my daily writing blog has become filled with dictation and my experiences with it. I have also found it helpful to dictate my thoughts on some of the dictation books I’ve been reading (or re-reading). This is the book I read last night: 15-Minute Dictation by Sean Platt and Neeve Silver It's a nice, short book. I like the fact that he addresses the problem of rewiring your brain, which was the aspect of dictation that I was having the most problems with. He addresses that this rewiring process requires consistency, doing dictation every day for a few weeks to get more used to it. Here's a quote: “Fortunately, you already know how to talk. And you already know how to tell stories. Think of them as two train stations in your brain. We're going to lay track in between them to forge a permanent connection that makes it easier for you to talk your stories. ” Page 55 Like other dictation books, he recommends practicing dictation with other things besides your...

I had another late start to my day today because I had a bad IBS flare-up. My IBS has been bad for several days now, and I think I know what I had eaten to cause it (something that hadn’t affected me much before, but which caused problems this time). So, I decided to try dictating during my morning walk. I admit, yesterday's dictation was pretty awesome. It was much nicer to walk rather than sitting at my desk to write. And being outside my house forced me to only concentrate on my work, since there wasn't anything else for me to do, besides listen to music or an audiobook. I did have to train myself to stop speaking and pause my recorder when a car was going past, since one or two of the books on dictation I have read have mentioned that car noises can drown out the dictation and make it difficult for Dragon to transcribe. However once I got onto the walking trail, I didn't have to worry about cars, although I still did stop and pause the recording when I passed other ...

So I'm back to trying dictation for my fiction. I pulled out books on dictation which I had read before, and I started rereading them last night. One of my favorite books is Dictate Your Book: How To Write Your Book Faster, Better, and Smarter by Monica Leonelle. I'm not sure exactly what it is about this book that I really like, except that maybe I just like her writing voice and writing style. In my opinion, her advice is very practical. I especially like one of her early pieces of advice which is to ease into dictation slowly. She suggests that instead of using dictation right away to work on your book, which I think is what most writers would expect to do, she suggests using dictation for other things so that you get used to the procedure of dictation and what it feels like to speak text. She suggests dictating emails and blog posts and lists and other small things instead of your book.
 I think I agree with her. I forgot to mention yesterday that this is my third or...

I admit I didn’t sleep well last night, which might be why it’s taking a while for me to start on my writing work for the day. I actually ended up taking too long doing my daily marketing task, because it was easier for me to do that than have to switch to my fiction and focus on writing. My brain just feels really tired. However, I had set an alarm to sound at 2 pm to remind me to get to writing if I wasn’t already, and that saved me. I finished up my marketing work (although it took another 20 minutes) and now I’m ready to move to writing for the day. * I ended up dictating my writing today, which I know seems a bit sudden. I can’t quite remember why I stopped trying out dictation before—I think I was in the middle of a bad IBS bout and I just didn’t have the mental and physical energy to deal with dictation, and I just wanted to get some writing done, so I resorted to typing since it was easier. And I never went back to practicing dictation after that. I always intended to t...

It’s been almost seven months since I wrote my last Evaluation 6 , but I finally got around to Evaluation #7! Here’s the gist of what I’ve learned over the past few months about my writing and productivity. New schedule My IBS was slowly been starting to feel better recently. I am still extremely strict with my diet, but I am also starting to experiment with what foods I can and can’t eat. I have also started a new eating and sleeping schedule, which I have dubbed my “chrono-diet” because I’m trying to take advantage of my circadian rhythm, according to the book Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life (I had borrowed a copy from the library but I enjoyed it so much I went ahead and bought it). I have started waking up at 6 am and exercising first thing, then having breakfast after exercise. I do house chores and/or work until noon, which is when I eat lunch. I’m supposed to not eat until dinner around 5:30 or 6, but I haven’t been able to break the habit of snacking in the aftern...