Day 788: Dictation, day 5
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 scenes is invaluable, like playing scales and etudes on the piano before a recital.” I played piano and that totally makes sense to me. Even though it will take some time, the warm-up exercises might make the dictation go smoother.
I liked his explanation about why reading warmups help improve his dictation. It sets a good dictation pace so your body can internalize it and activates language centers in your brain. The purpose is to strive for a nice easy pace of 5000 words per hour.
He also suggests reading a book in your genre: “Reading aloud develops verbal agility, especially with genre lingo and descriptors I don’t use in daily conversation.” It made me realize that I could read some of my Regency research reading books for my dictation warmup and kill two birds with one stone.
The warm-up exercises he does are really interesting. He only does 2 exercises a day, but he changes up which ones he does. He does a minimum of 10 minutes of warm-up exercises, but usually 30-40 minutes long. I don’t know if I want to commit to that much time, but I suppose it also depends on how much time I have for writing on a particular day.
There are a total of ten exercises and each one is meant to help improve one aspect of dictation. He focuses a lot on sentences. While he’s a bit nerdy about sentences and grammar, the exercises are useful also because Dragon works better when you dictate entire sentences rather than word by word.
Personally, I found his exercises much more interesting than the drills in Cindy Grigg’s book, The Productive Author's Guide to Dictation: Speak Your Way to Higher (and Healthier!) Word Counts, but each person has different tastes. Cindy has more exercises than this book, so there are more likely to be exercises that appeal to many different kinds of writers.
When he finally dictates his fiction, he does something similar to that first warm-up exercise. He goes over the scene FOUR times, for 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 20 minutes. His 2 minute pass is more like an outline, and he adds more detail or makes changes in each pass.
The multiple passes enables you to get a better grasp of the scene since you’re going over it four times. He has you start off visualizing the scene, but going through it four times helps you get a much clearer picture of what you want to happen in the scene.
Each pass is very low stress since he’s going over the scene several times. There’s less pressure to get it right the first time, since you know you’ll just add whatever you forgot the next time.
In the book, he also shows his synopsis notecard of the elements of each scene to make it easier for him to dictate the scene.
He ends the book with a whole bunch of writing prompts, but I would probably use the prompts in my favorite prompt book, Pen On Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide To Igniting The Writer Within by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett.
I read this book before and I think I even did one or two of the warm-up exercises, but I quit dictation that time before I did all his warm-up exercises. I think I will give it more of a shot this time, to see if the exercises will help my dictation go smoother and faster. I also want to learn how to dictate more cleanly, and I think the exercises with the focus on sentences might actually help me with that.
The last time I tried dictating, I think I had also tried his method of dictating a scene multiple times, but I remember I didn’t like it very much. This might be because my blocking notes for each scene are incredibly detailed.
I suppose the multiple passes are like doing the blocking notes for the scene the first one or two passes and then dictating the actual scene the last two passes.
However, I like investing time in my blocking notes because it ensures that my scene pacing and scene structure is good and that I’ve tried my best to eliminate any logic errors. That might be why I didn’t like the multiple-pass dictation method he uses for his own fiction.
However, I also know that most writers don’t like doing the amount of outlining and blocking that I do before they write the scene, so this multiple-pass method might work really well for them. Also, it reduces the stress of dictation since you’re going over the scene multiple times, and when first starting dictation, I think this helps a lot.
Overall, I like this book as much as Monica Leonelle’s book, but for different reasons. If a writer could only get one book, I’d suggest Monica’s, but it’s not like this book is that expensive, and I think a writer getting into dictation would really benefit from this one, too.
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This is probably the third or fourth time I’m trying dictation. The other times, I gave up after a week or so.
This time around, the dictation seems a lot easier than the last time. I have the same equipment that I had last time, although I’m using them a bit differently. Last time, I didn’t do much walking and did more dictation at my desk or in the backyard. I think I didn’t walk much because I was too self-conscious about speaking into a recorder out in public. I’m a few years older now, and I have stopped caring about dumb things like that.
This time, speaking my fiction still seems exactly the same, just as awkward as last time. But I think I’ve been having less trouble getting myself to do the dictation rather than not wanting to bother and just doing my work by typing.
I’m realizing one of the keys to making this dictation work is to have everything set up so dictation and transcription are as easy as possible. I have a dedicated cord attached to my computer to make downloading the files from my digital recorder as easy as possible. It’s still not as easy as doing the recording directly into my computer, but I’ve been seeing that I tend to dictate for longer when I’m out walking rather that just sitting at my desk, where I can stop anytime and leave my computer.
So this time around, I mostly use the digital recorder rather than the microphone hooked up to my computer. I still do need the microphone to train Dragon, but the majority of dictation has been on the recorder even when I’m in the house. It’s easy to whip the recorder out and dictate notes for my blog, which saves me a little time. Using the recorder during my walk makes it much easier to dictate fiction.
Also, I realize that a really big reason the dictation is easier this time around is because I’ve been doing my daily writing streak. It has made it a lot easier for me to get started on my writing work each day, whereas before the streak, I would procrastinate a lot, and sometimes I would have to struggle a lot before I finally got to work. Since I have a lower threshold of resistance to starting work, it’s easier for me to get ready to go dictate.
Related to this, I’ve been exercising daily for about 4 months now, and so the process to get ready to go out to walk is a lot shorter now and it’s become more of a habit than it was before. So to go out for a walk to dictate is even easier since it’s less difficult to get myself to start work, and it’s less difficult to get myself ready to go out walking.
Another reason I think the dictation is easier this time around is because I have been trying to optimize my schedule lately. I have determined the specific “frogs” I need to do every day before writing, and I have a set time in the afternoon now to do my writing after my “frogs.” The schedule makes it easy to know how much time I have each day to dictate and be able to plan accordingly.
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As I wrote above when I read Fool Proof Dictation, I decided to give his dictation exercises a go. I was hoping it would warm me up before I start dictating fiction, and I also am hoping that the emphasis on sentences will help me learn to dictate more smoothly, with fewer errors.
I got a late start today because of more IBS issues, but I managed to do my frogs despite being in some pain. However I have less time to write this afternoon. I also took a little extra time figuring out how to do each of the dictation exercises, although now I know what prompts I have chosen to use in future so it shouldn’t take me as long to get started next time.
I started with reading two pages of a Regency novel and transcribing it. It was 613 words in 7 minutes, 15 seconds, which is 5073 words per hour, so I’m at a good pace, I think.
The first exercise was to dictate using short sentences. I thought this was a really great exercise. In using short sentences, you don't have to stress about dictating beautiful prose, which helps you let go of some of the stress in dictation. The exercise also is trying to make you trust more in the editing to fix errors, but I’m not sure if I completely buy that editing covers over a multitude of sins. If you don’t dictate very good ideas to begin with, editing can’t fix that.
You are supposed to dictate to a fiction prompt, but I decided to use my Regency series. Instead of dictating the manuscript I'm currently working on, I decided to work on the side novel for the series, which I’ve already outlined, since the characters are all completely different. Also, instead of dictating prose, I decided to dictate my blocking notes, since I haven't yet done blocking for this side novel.
The exercise seemed to work quite well. I didn't bother trying to make pretty sentences, and just dictated short sentences to lay my ideas out. It was helpful because there were certain things I needed to include in the scene, but I hadn't yet decided how to let the reader know about them yet. The short sentences helped me to decide what information to dole out at a time, without the pressure of putting it into good writing—it was actually more like a list. For the blocking, especially, I think this was perfectly fine, and might even have been preferable.
I also noticed that the reading exercise I did first helped me to speak at a good dictation pace. It is slower than yesterday, and I think I am enunciating better.
The second exercise is to vary your sentence length, like how people usually write fiction. The varied sentence length helps to develop a pleasant rhythm as you read, so this exercise also helps you to dictate varying sentence lengths in the same way you would type it. The prompt for this exercise is supposed to be a photo, but instead I decided to use a prompt from Pen On Fire.
It felt like a pretty nice warm-up before I did my dictation. I’ll definitely keep trying to do warm-up exercises from this book before my dictation to see if it helps.
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In 52 minutes, I dictated 2240 words of raw dictation. Transcription took 24 minutes. Cleaning up the raw dictation took 24 minutes. At the end, I had 1805 usable words. My final words per hour rate was 1083, which was faster than yesterday, and a bit faster than my average speed when I type and edit as I go.
I didn’t count the time I took to dictate my warm-up exercises. I couldn’t quite decide if I should include it in my writing time or not, but eventually decided not to. My writing time is already confusing since I’m including my dictation, transcription, and clean-up editing time all rolled into one. However, in doing that, I can more accurately compare my dictation speed with my typing and editing as I go speed—raw dictation is nowhere near as clean as my writing when I type, but the cleaned-up dictation is more similar. Anyway, because I’m trying to compare the two input methods, I thought I’d disregard my warm-up exercise time. However, on a random side note, it was nice to be able to use dictation to work on my blocking notes for The Spinster Spy (the side novel for my series) while I was doing my warm-up exercises.
As for my raw dictation speed, it was 2585 words per hour, which was a little bit faster than yesterday, so I hope that means I’m getting better at this dictation stuff. I did notice that I seemed to be dictating very slowly in the beginning, and faster the longer I was out walking. If I’d had more than an hour for dictating today, I think I could have dictated a lot faster.
It seems to be the case that when I dictate, I need an equal amount of time for transcription and clean-up editing. I need to make sure to allocate time. Today I ended up postponing my dinner in order to do the transcription and editing before it got too late, but the late hour was partly because I had started work late this morning.
However, I have been noticing for the past few days that my total word count each day is rather high. It’s not just that the dictation lets me write more words per hour, but I dictate for a set amount of time whenever I’m outside the house, without getting distracted, so I end up with a lot of raw dictation words. Unfortunately, that means I end up needing to take more time to transcribe and clean-up edit those words, which is why I’ve been working later than I’d like after dinnertime. I hope my IBS flare-up passes quickly so I can get started earlier in the morning and have more time for work.
Writing streak: 267 days
Regency series:
Editing: Time spent: 12 minutes (cycling editing of the words I wrote yesterday)
Writing: Time spent: 1 hour, 54 minutes (includes dictation, transcription, and clean-up editing time)
Writing: Total number of words: 1805 words (usable, not raw dictation)
Writing-related business:
Regency research reading: time spent: 22 minutes
Email: time spent: 5 minutes
Marketing: time spent: 20 minutes
My takeaway for today: The dictation exercises I did today as warm up seemed to be helpful, but I’ll need to do it more often to be sure.
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