Day 790: Dictation, day 7: Thoughts so far
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 much better the more time I spent on it. However, the truth is that I also didn't spend a great deal of time trying dictation before quitting. At those times, I think I practiced less than a total of 10 hours before quitting.
However, those few hours practicing dictation—even though the dictation was terrible and awful, even though it felt awkward and never got any better—were still hours of practice in dictation. This time around, while the first day of dictation was the same as the other times I have tried dictation, it started to feel a little little less awkward on day two. It was still terrible and awful, but I was starting to get used to it, at least physically, because of the previous hours of experience I’d had. Hearing my voice didn't freak me out quite as much as the days went by.
Getting used to dictation mentally was not so easy. My brain was having the same amount of difficulty in dictating, and it wasn't getting better or even less awkward. I think this is why I would quit dictation those other times, because I could tell I was unable to rewire my brain even after several hours of dictation work.
However, this time I was rereading several of the most useful dictation books I already owned, as well as reading some dictation books I picked up from the library, and I was more knowledgeable about dictation. I could compare the books to each other and compile the general information they all gave.
Most dictation books talk about the necessity of rewiring your brain because you have become used to thinking your prose and then sending the signal to your hands to type. With dictation, you need to rewire that neurological pathway to go from your brain to your mouth.
But Monica Leonelle in her Dictate Your Book: How To Write Your Book Faster, Better, and Smarter mentioned that you also need to speak in sentences for the Dragon transcription to work best. However, I personally don't think in sentences when I write. I think word by word. This also might be why dictation was so hard for me before and I ended up quitting, because I couldn't get my brain to think in longer phrases or sentences.
Most dictation books say that rewiring your brain just takes practice. I am positive that is true, but for me, at least, it is not simply rewiring my brain to send the prose to my mouth instead of my hands. I also need to learn how to write in longer phrases or sentences instead of word by word. If I can't do this, I will end up quitting dictation like all the times before, because I’ll get frustrated that it seems to be too difficult and I won't be able to improve.
With that in mind, I read through my dictation books looking for exercises to help me rewire my brain in order to think in longer phrases. Not all books came with exercises. Many simply gave prompts for you to use for a dictation session.
However, the exercises in Fool Proof Dictation: A No-Nonsense System for Effective & Rewarding Dictation by Christopher Downing were focused on sentences, and I realized those might be the exercises I needed to change the way my brain thought of prose. Many of his exercises focused on sentence length and structure and rhythm, so that you get used to dictating sentences with the same rhythm that you do when you type and write. But since the drills focus on individual sentences, I thought it might help to adjust the way I think when I write.
It's only been a week, and it's only been a couple days since I reread Fool Proof Dictation, but I think that the two days of drills from his book have been helping me to adjust my thinking. His reading exercise warm-up helped me to internalize a good pace for my dictation. The stream of consciousness exercise, which was also suggested by other dictation books, helped me to get used to dictating slowly, but without stopping.
And the two sentence variation drills I have done so far seem to help me to visualize the sentence before I speak it. For me, this is huge. I will typically think only in individual words or very short phrases, type it out, and only after seeing the words, will I decide what to write next. But the sentence variation exercises seem to be forcing me to think in short sentences rather than just short phrases.
This rewiring of my brain is not going quickly or smoothly, but when trying dictation this time around, I can at least see some progress and improvement. I can think in only short sentences, not long ones, but it's an improvement from my usual way of thinking when I dictate.
Every author's experience with dictation will be different, but for me, I needed these exercises to help me learn to think in a slightly different way. I needed to rewire my brain to learn to send the words to my mouth instead of my hands, but I also needed to rewire the way my brain thought when I write.
After a week, dictation is still very difficult. I am not the type of person for whom dictation comes easily. It did not suddenly click for me. I am not an extrovert, nor am I used to speaking out loud to myself.
But this time around, I am learning how to make dictation work for me. The biggest difference is the sentence variation exercises to train my brain to think in sentences. However, I also can't discount that I needed the hours of dictating so that my body would get more accustomed to the sensation.
The other day, I also realized that one reason the dictation is much easier this time is because my blocking notes for the scenes are much more detailed than they were the last time I tried dictation. Just like when I type and write, better blocking notes help me to know what points I need to include in the scene, and how conversations flow, and the sequence of fight scenes. I noticed that the detail in my blocking scenes made the last scene go very smoothly.
In Fool Proof Dictation, the author dictates his scenes four times over. He dictates the first time for two minutes, then five minutes, then 10 minutes, then 20 minutes. The first two passes are more like an outline. I think that this method is kind of like him making blocking notes for himself for his scene, so that by the time he is writing the prose in the last two passes, he has already figured out character movements and dialogue flow. It might be why I didn't care as much for that exercise when I tried it before, the last time I tried dictation. The first couple passes seemed a little pointless to me. But now I think I understand the purpose, and the fact that it didn't quite mesh with my own writing style.
The equipment I'm using for dictation this time is the same as I had before. I have not bought anything new. I have a cheap podcast mic attached to my computer, a generic voice recording app on my computer, and Dragon software. Since I have a Mac, I have Parallels software which is running Windows 10 so that I can run the PC version of Dragon on my Mac. (This is because I read lots of reviews that the Mac version of Dragon was terrible, and most people suggested spending the money to get Parallels and the PC version instead.)
The last time I tried dictation, I also tried dictating while walking. Monica Leonelle in her book Dictate Your Book had chosen to take her podcast mic out on her walk with her so that the sound quality would be good enough for Dragon to recognize and transcribe accurately. I tried this, using my podcast mic hooked up to my iPhone, but it was very heavy and cumbersome.
After doing a lot of research online, I bought a small handheld digital recorder with unidirectional mics and a wind sock. I took this out on walks a few times, and the transcription wasn't terrible, but it wasn't as good as using my podcast mic at my computer. However, the size and weight were great, and it was much easier to grab the recorder and go out to walk.
At that time, I was also having bad IBS issues, and I ended up quitting dictation because it was too stressful and I wanted to write with less stress, so I went back to typing. At the time, I was still having issues thinking my prose in a way that would make the dictation smooth and flow easily, and so my dictation was choppy and I kept repeating myself to fix errors. The resulting cleanup editing was horrendous.
This time, I decided to try walking and dictating again. I have been walking every day for the last 120 days in an exercise streak, so the walks have become a regular part of my daily routine. I think that might have helped a little bit, since it enabled me to easily walk for 60 to 90 minutes at a time.
So I had a little bit of physical stamina built up. I think this would only make a difference if an author had a difficult time walking for an hour before starting to dictate and walk. However, I walk very slowly and my walking pace when I dictate is more of an ample, so my physical stamina isn't really that high.
It also helped that I made it as easy as possible for me to go out walking and dictating. My walking shoes are right by the door. My digital recorder is not only light and small, but I have it in a convenient little carrying pouch that I can grab on my way out the door, and the pouch already has extra batteries and a pair of earbuds. My blocking notes are on my phone. I have done everything I can to reduce any resistance to going out to walk and dictate. The last time I tried dictation, I wasn’t this prepared and it was more of a hassle to go outside to dictate, so I would usually just stay home and dictate at my computer.
Another difference this time is that I have been working very hard to optimize my daily writing routine and to build up more hours of writing each day, especially since I had a few months where my IBS was so bad that I could only write a a few minutes a day. Since I have been trying to build up the number of hours that I write each day, I have built up some mental stamina so that I can write for at least an hour.
So when going out to dictate and walk, I think that the mental stamina that I have been building up helped me to be able to dictate for the full hour that I was walking. I was able to focus and dictate my manuscript without distracting myself or wanting to stop.
The fact that I was outside my home and some distance away also helped me to continue work even if I might have been tempted to stop. Even if I decided to turn around and go home, I still had to walk several minutes before I returned home, and so I would dictate during that time, too. Being outside my home helped to prod me to continue working just a little while longer, since I was already walking and dictating.
Also, the dictation became a self feedback loop. The first time I went out to dictate and walk, I ended up walking and dictating for 30 minutes before I realized the time that had passed, and so I turned back. I kept dictating on the way home, and I ended up dictating for almost an hour and a half because I was walking slowly. When I transcribed my dictation, it was thrilling to see the huge number of words I had dictated during that time. I knew they were raw dictation words and that I still needed to spend time to clean them up, but the fact that I had dictated 5000 words in 90 minutes made me feel great. Even when typing for three hours, I could never write that many words easily. and the dictation had seemed to take much less effort. Of course, at the time, I hadn't yet done the work of cleanup, so in a sense, I was deluding myself a little bit.
However, the truth was that I was able to dictate during my daily walk, which was incredibly efficient and productive, and I felt great about myself. I was able to dictate blog posts as well as fiction. I found myself being able to dictate thousands more words than I usually did. Seeing that huge jump in my daily words was like a hit of sugar.
And so, like a junkie, I went walking and dictating again, to rack up more words. I figured, I had to go walking every day anyway, so I may as well dictate while I do it. And each time I came back with a ton of words dictated, I again felt that rush of accomplishment. And so, the dictation began to feed on itself — it felt good to see that I had dictated so many words, so I would go out the next day to dictate again.
So, this time around, I am using my digital recorder much more than before, and I’m going out walking for longer periods. I discovered that the act of dictating and walking happens to really work for me, personally. The last time I tried dictation, I did some dictation and walking, but I think that this time, I have spent more hours walking then I did last time.
I also think that the amount of time I spend walking each session makes a difference. I noticed that the dictation is always a bit awkward for the first couple of minutes, but it gets better after that. I start to dictate more smoothly the longer my dictation session is. So the dictation is better when I am out walking for an hour rather than only 30 minutes.
And since I spent many more hours walking this time, I have had more hours of dictation practice. Practice does make the dictation a little easier, but as I mentioned before, the hours of dictation practice I did the last time I tried dictation were not enough to make the dictation less stressful. This time, however, the dictation and walking has become much less stressful, plus the sentence variation exercises seem to be helping to reduce the stress of dictation by training my brain in how to think and write in sentences rather than words and phrases.
Another reason why the dictation is less stressful this time is also because for the past several weeks, I have been working to learn how to write around my health issues. Last year, the stress of the IBS made it difficult for me to get any work done at all. I have been learning how to calm down and be patient with my symptoms. I also have a new waking, sleeping and eating schedule that seems to have been helping my intestines to calm down. This schedule has also made it easier for me to sometimes predict when the symptoms will start to diminish during the day (usually after 2 PM).
Since my IBS is less stressful right now, and since I have learned how to write more efficiently despite the symptoms, it has also made the dictation less stressful. I think that if I were more stressed, I would not have wanted to even try dictation again. However, I had been feeling well enough to give it another shot when I happened to read about it in a different productivity book.
The cleanup editing is still a horrible experience. Part of it is that I need to spend time to train Dragon to recognize certain words. Dragon also messes up names, and while most dictation books say to use a placeholder name instead, it is hard for me to do because a character's name tends to influence how I think of them, and how I write them. Calling them by a different name changes how I write the character's dialogue and actions. So I have been rather stubbornly, I admit, trying to train Dragon to recognize my characters' names. But I also know that if I just spend the time to do it, I don't have to do it again.
Also, this time, because of the reading exercise I did from Fool Proof Dictation, I noticed that my dictation pace has become slower and more even. And when I speak slowly and in a more measured pace, Dragon naturally has better accuracy. The reading exercise also has been helping me to remember to enunciate my words, which also improves Dragon's accuracy. So I think that if I continue doing the reading exercises, the cleanup will get better as Dragon's accuracy improves.
I have noticed that however long I do the dictation, I will take the same amount of time to do the transcription and the cleanup editing. The transcription can take a while because my computer is slow, but the cleanup editing also takes a long time. However, because I can guesstimate how long the transcription and cleanup will take, I can schedule my dictation so that I dictate for exactly half of the amount of time I have to write that day, and then I can spend the rest of the time doing the transcription and cleanup. I am still not great at time management, so for the past few days I have found myself working later than I wanted to. But I think once I figure out a good schedule, I'll be able to plan my dictation time and leave enough time for postproduction.
So those are my thoughts on dictation so far. Basically, it feels awkward and terrible, but the right exercises seem to be helping reprogram my brain as well as making me slow my speaking speed and enunciate better, which improves accuracy. I’ve eliminated as much resistance to my going out walking and dictating, which seems to help eliminate distractions and force me to focus and dictate for longer stretches of time. The resulting high word counts (even though they’re deceptively large since they’re un-edited) have been very motivating.
Now I only need to see if the exercises will really help retrain my brain. I’ll see if the dictation gets any easier and faster the more I practice it.
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 much better the more time I spent on it. However, the truth is that I also didn't spend a great deal of time trying dictation before quitting. At those times, I think I practiced less than a total of 10 hours before quitting.
However, those few hours practicing dictation—even though the dictation was terrible and awful, even though it felt awkward and never got any better—were still hours of practice in dictation. This time around, while the first day of dictation was the same as the other times I have tried dictation, it started to feel a little little less awkward on day two. It was still terrible and awful, but I was starting to get used to it, at least physically, because of the previous hours of experience I’d had. Hearing my voice didn't freak me out quite as much as the days went by.
Getting used to dictation mentally was not so easy. My brain was having the same amount of difficulty in dictating, and it wasn't getting better or even less awkward. I think this is why I would quit dictation those other times, because I could tell I was unable to rewire my brain even after several hours of dictation work.
However, this time I was rereading several of the most useful dictation books I already owned, as well as reading some dictation books I picked up from the library, and I was more knowledgeable about dictation. I could compare the books to each other and compile the general information they all gave.
Most dictation books talk about the necessity of rewiring your brain because you have become used to thinking your prose and then sending the signal to your hands to type. With dictation, you need to rewire that neurological pathway to go from your brain to your mouth.
But Monica Leonelle in her Dictate Your Book: How To Write Your Book Faster, Better, and Smarter mentioned that you also need to speak in sentences for the Dragon transcription to work best. However, I personally don't think in sentences when I write. I think word by word. This also might be why dictation was so hard for me before and I ended up quitting, because I couldn't get my brain to think in longer phrases or sentences.
Most dictation books say that rewiring your brain just takes practice. I am positive that is true, but for me, at least, it is not simply rewiring my brain to send the prose to my mouth instead of my hands. I also need to learn how to write in longer phrases or sentences instead of word by word. If I can't do this, I will end up quitting dictation like all the times before, because I’ll get frustrated that it seems to be too difficult and I won't be able to improve.
With that in mind, I read through my dictation books looking for exercises to help me rewire my brain in order to think in longer phrases. Not all books came with exercises. Many simply gave prompts for you to use for a dictation session.
However, the exercises in Fool Proof Dictation: A No-Nonsense System for Effective & Rewarding Dictation by Christopher Downing were focused on sentences, and I realized those might be the exercises I needed to change the way my brain thought of prose. Many of his exercises focused on sentence length and structure and rhythm, so that you get used to dictating sentences with the same rhythm that you do when you type and write. But since the drills focus on individual sentences, I thought it might help to adjust the way I think when I write.
It's only been a week, and it's only been a couple days since I reread Fool Proof Dictation, but I think that the two days of drills from his book have been helping me to adjust my thinking. His reading exercise warm-up helped me to internalize a good pace for my dictation. The stream of consciousness exercise, which was also suggested by other dictation books, helped me to get used to dictating slowly, but without stopping.
And the two sentence variation drills I have done so far seem to help me to visualize the sentence before I speak it. For me, this is huge. I will typically think only in individual words or very short phrases, type it out, and only after seeing the words, will I decide what to write next. But the sentence variation exercises seem to be forcing me to think in short sentences rather than just short phrases.
This rewiring of my brain is not going quickly or smoothly, but when trying dictation this time around, I can at least see some progress and improvement. I can think in only short sentences, not long ones, but it's an improvement from my usual way of thinking when I dictate.
Every author's experience with dictation will be different, but for me, I needed these exercises to help me learn to think in a slightly different way. I needed to rewire my brain to learn to send the words to my mouth instead of my hands, but I also needed to rewire the way my brain thought when I write.
After a week, dictation is still very difficult. I am not the type of person for whom dictation comes easily. It did not suddenly click for me. I am not an extrovert, nor am I used to speaking out loud to myself.
But this time around, I am learning how to make dictation work for me. The biggest difference is the sentence variation exercises to train my brain to think in sentences. However, I also can't discount that I needed the hours of dictating so that my body would get more accustomed to the sensation.
The other day, I also realized that one reason the dictation is much easier this time is because my blocking notes for the scenes are much more detailed than they were the last time I tried dictation. Just like when I type and write, better blocking notes help me to know what points I need to include in the scene, and how conversations flow, and the sequence of fight scenes. I noticed that the detail in my blocking scenes made the last scene go very smoothly.
In Fool Proof Dictation, the author dictates his scenes four times over. He dictates the first time for two minutes, then five minutes, then 10 minutes, then 20 minutes. The first two passes are more like an outline. I think that this method is kind of like him making blocking notes for himself for his scene, so that by the time he is writing the prose in the last two passes, he has already figured out character movements and dialogue flow. It might be why I didn't care as much for that exercise when I tried it before, the last time I tried dictation. The first couple passes seemed a little pointless to me. But now I think I understand the purpose, and the fact that it didn't quite mesh with my own writing style.
The equipment I'm using for dictation this time is the same as I had before. I have not bought anything new. I have a cheap podcast mic attached to my computer, a generic voice recording app on my computer, and Dragon software. Since I have a Mac, I have Parallels software which is running Windows 10 so that I can run the PC version of Dragon on my Mac. (This is because I read lots of reviews that the Mac version of Dragon was terrible, and most people suggested spending the money to get Parallels and the PC version instead.)
The last time I tried dictation, I also tried dictating while walking. Monica Leonelle in her book Dictate Your Book had chosen to take her podcast mic out on her walk with her so that the sound quality would be good enough for Dragon to recognize and transcribe accurately. I tried this, using my podcast mic hooked up to my iPhone, but it was very heavy and cumbersome.
After doing a lot of research online, I bought a small handheld digital recorder with unidirectional mics and a wind sock. I took this out on walks a few times, and the transcription wasn't terrible, but it wasn't as good as using my podcast mic at my computer. However, the size and weight were great, and it was much easier to grab the recorder and go out to walk.
At that time, I was also having bad IBS issues, and I ended up quitting dictation because it was too stressful and I wanted to write with less stress, so I went back to typing. At the time, I was still having issues thinking my prose in a way that would make the dictation smooth and flow easily, and so my dictation was choppy and I kept repeating myself to fix errors. The resulting cleanup editing was horrendous.
This time, I decided to try walking and dictating again. I have been walking every day for the last 120 days in an exercise streak, so the walks have become a regular part of my daily routine. I think that might have helped a little bit, since it enabled me to easily walk for 60 to 90 minutes at a time.
So I had a little bit of physical stamina built up. I think this would only make a difference if an author had a difficult time walking for an hour before starting to dictate and walk. However, I walk very slowly and my walking pace when I dictate is more of an ample, so my physical stamina isn't really that high.
It also helped that I made it as easy as possible for me to go out walking and dictating. My walking shoes are right by the door. My digital recorder is not only light and small, but I have it in a convenient little carrying pouch that I can grab on my way out the door, and the pouch already has extra batteries and a pair of earbuds. My blocking notes are on my phone. I have done everything I can to reduce any resistance to going out to walk and dictate. The last time I tried dictation, I wasn’t this prepared and it was more of a hassle to go outside to dictate, so I would usually just stay home and dictate at my computer.
Another difference this time is that I have been working very hard to optimize my daily writing routine and to build up more hours of writing each day, especially since I had a few months where my IBS was so bad that I could only write a a few minutes a day. Since I have been trying to build up the number of hours that I write each day, I have built up some mental stamina so that I can write for at least an hour.
So when going out to dictate and walk, I think that the mental stamina that I have been building up helped me to be able to dictate for the full hour that I was walking. I was able to focus and dictate my manuscript without distracting myself or wanting to stop.
The fact that I was outside my home and some distance away also helped me to continue work even if I might have been tempted to stop. Even if I decided to turn around and go home, I still had to walk several minutes before I returned home, and so I would dictate during that time, too. Being outside my home helped to prod me to continue working just a little while longer, since I was already walking and dictating.
Also, the dictation became a self feedback loop. The first time I went out to dictate and walk, I ended up walking and dictating for 30 minutes before I realized the time that had passed, and so I turned back. I kept dictating on the way home, and I ended up dictating for almost an hour and a half because I was walking slowly. When I transcribed my dictation, it was thrilling to see the huge number of words I had dictated during that time. I knew they were raw dictation words and that I still needed to spend time to clean them up, but the fact that I had dictated 5000 words in 90 minutes made me feel great. Even when typing for three hours, I could never write that many words easily. and the dictation had seemed to take much less effort. Of course, at the time, I hadn't yet done the work of cleanup, so in a sense, I was deluding myself a little bit.
However, the truth was that I was able to dictate during my daily walk, which was incredibly efficient and productive, and I felt great about myself. I was able to dictate blog posts as well as fiction. I found myself being able to dictate thousands more words than I usually did. Seeing that huge jump in my daily words was like a hit of sugar.
And so, like a junkie, I went walking and dictating again, to rack up more words. I figured, I had to go walking every day anyway, so I may as well dictate while I do it. And each time I came back with a ton of words dictated, I again felt that rush of accomplishment. And so, the dictation began to feed on itself — it felt good to see that I had dictated so many words, so I would go out the next day to dictate again.
So, this time around, I am using my digital recorder much more than before, and I’m going out walking for longer periods. I discovered that the act of dictating and walking happens to really work for me, personally. The last time I tried dictation, I did some dictation and walking, but I think that this time, I have spent more hours walking then I did last time.
I also think that the amount of time I spend walking each session makes a difference. I noticed that the dictation is always a bit awkward for the first couple of minutes, but it gets better after that. I start to dictate more smoothly the longer my dictation session is. So the dictation is better when I am out walking for an hour rather than only 30 minutes.
And since I spent many more hours walking this time, I have had more hours of dictation practice. Practice does make the dictation a little easier, but as I mentioned before, the hours of dictation practice I did the last time I tried dictation were not enough to make the dictation less stressful. This time, however, the dictation and walking has become much less stressful, plus the sentence variation exercises seem to be helping to reduce the stress of dictation by training my brain in how to think and write in sentences rather than words and phrases.
Another reason why the dictation is less stressful this time is also because for the past several weeks, I have been working to learn how to write around my health issues. Last year, the stress of the IBS made it difficult for me to get any work done at all. I have been learning how to calm down and be patient with my symptoms. I also have a new waking, sleeping and eating schedule that seems to have been helping my intestines to calm down. This schedule has also made it easier for me to sometimes predict when the symptoms will start to diminish during the day (usually after 2 PM).
Since my IBS is less stressful right now, and since I have learned how to write more efficiently despite the symptoms, it has also made the dictation less stressful. I think that if I were more stressed, I would not have wanted to even try dictation again. However, I had been feeling well enough to give it another shot when I happened to read about it in a different productivity book.
The cleanup editing is still a horrible experience. Part of it is that I need to spend time to train Dragon to recognize certain words. Dragon also messes up names, and while most dictation books say to use a placeholder name instead, it is hard for me to do because a character's name tends to influence how I think of them, and how I write them. Calling them by a different name changes how I write the character's dialogue and actions. So I have been rather stubbornly, I admit, trying to train Dragon to recognize my characters' names. But I also know that if I just spend the time to do it, I don't have to do it again.
Also, this time, because of the reading exercise I did from Fool Proof Dictation, I noticed that my dictation pace has become slower and more even. And when I speak slowly and in a more measured pace, Dragon naturally has better accuracy. The reading exercise also has been helping me to remember to enunciate my words, which also improves Dragon's accuracy. So I think that if I continue doing the reading exercises, the cleanup will get better as Dragon's accuracy improves.
I have noticed that however long I do the dictation, I will take the same amount of time to do the transcription and the cleanup editing. The transcription can take a while because my computer is slow, but the cleanup editing also takes a long time. However, because I can guesstimate how long the transcription and cleanup will take, I can schedule my dictation so that I dictate for exactly half of the amount of time I have to write that day, and then I can spend the rest of the time doing the transcription and cleanup. I am still not great at time management, so for the past few days I have found myself working later than I wanted to. But I think once I figure out a good schedule, I'll be able to plan my dictation time and leave enough time for postproduction.
So those are my thoughts on dictation so far. Basically, it feels awkward and terrible, but the right exercises seem to be helping reprogram my brain as well as making me slow my speaking speed and enunciate better, which improves accuracy. I’ve eliminated as much resistance to my going out walking and dictating, which seems to help eliminate distractions and force me to focus and dictate for longer stretches of time. The resulting high word counts (even though they’re deceptively large since they’re un-edited) have been very motivating.
Now I only need to see if the exercises will really help retrain my brain. I’ll see if the dictation gets any easier and faster the more I practice it.
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