Day 793: Dictation, day 10: Flash fiction marketing, effectiveness of certain exercises
I managed to be very efficient and get my work done this morning without dawdling or wasting time being distracted on my phone. I got most of my frogs done, but I skipped my marketing, partly because I was running out of time (since I wanted to start writing by 1 PM), but also because I already did over an hour of marketing yesterday, so I didn’t feel the need to do more today. I feel like my time management today was a bit better than yesterday.
I am about to go out the door to walk and dictate, but I am a bit concerned. My IBS is giving me a few problems. I took medication, a few minutes ago, so it hasn't kicked in yet. I hope I'll feel better soon so that I can dictate on my walk without issues.
***
I decided to skip a dictation exercise in Fool Proof Dictation: A No-Nonsense System for Effective & Rewarding Dictation because it was to dictate a scene from two points of view. I only do one point of view per scene, so I couldn't do this exercise with my fiction projects, I would have to do something new. Or I could use my fiction as the prompt, but I would not be able to use the entire exercise in my book.
The exercise I did was a flash fiction exercise. Originally I was going to skip it. I don’t usually do a lot of flash fiction anymore, mostly because it’s really hard to use flash fiction to promote any of my full-length novels. So I always kind of considered flash fiction like wasted words when I could be working on my book instead.
But then I remembered a marketing idea I had come up with a few years ago, but never got around to doing. I had already posted the entirety of The Spinster's Christmas on my blog, but I was thinking about things I could post the next time I posted free fiction chapters. I thought it might be fun to copy something that manga artists often do for their published books. There are often extra pages because of the layout of the script, so artists will draw a humorous, short strip called a 4-komi. It's usually about something that happened in the previous chapter, but expanding it in a funny way, often in scenarios that would never be able to happen in the story world of the manga.
I thought it would be fun to write my own version of 4-komi. I could write a short vignette about something that happened in the chapter that was just posted on my blog, an improbable, funny situation as a comic side note.
However, I can’t post my Lady Wynwood's Spies series on my blog, since they are in Kindle Unlimited, and so I didn’t pursue writing any 4-komi. But I had the dictation exercise today, and I thought it would be fun to try flash fiction like a 4-komi vignette, related to my book.
I probably couldn’t post this on my blog, because I’d have to reference the book and chapter, and people would have to have read the book to get the humor of the vignette. But I suppose I'll try this anyway, since it seems fun and interesting.
I have a feeling that the purpose of the exercise is to train you to be able to visualize a scene in more detail order to dictate it, but I personally think that this sort of visualization isn't useful for me since I have already envisioned the scene when I wrote my blocking notes for it.
***
The flash fiction was actually rather fun, although as usual, it took me a while to decide how I wanted the scene to go. I guess I just take a long time when I plot a scene. And I took much longer than the 10 minutes the exercise was supposed to take. And I still didn’t quite finish the flash fiction (the middle has issues).
Still, this was rather fun. I’d be open to doing more flash fiction 4-komi vignettes related to my book, although I’d have to brainstorm what in the world I’d do with it.
***
I started my dictation, but then I remembered that I still need to do the cycling edits of the last few days dictation, so I decided to cut my writing dictation short. Also, my IBS began bothering me while I was walking, and it was difficult to dictate while I was in pain, so I turned around to head home.
I’m not sure if it’s because of the IBS, or because I only got about 48 minutes of dictation done, but the dictation today was TERRIBLE today. I kept needing to repeat sentences because they’d come out all wrong, or else I’d say something and realize it didn’t make sense, and then have to correct it. I was probably doing a lot of editing even as I was dictating.
I dictated for 48 minutes and wrote 1393 words. Transcription took 9 minutes, but cleanup editing took 20 minutes, and I ended up with only 964 usable words, so I cut a LOT. My dictation speed was 1741 words per hour, and my final writing speed (including dictation, transcription, and cleanup) was 749. I suppose I shouldn’t be so disappointed because that’s about the same speed as when I type and write, but it’s frustrating because I wanted to see more progress on my dictation.
I also did the cleanup editing on the dictation I did yesterday, since I hadn’t had time to do it last night. I ended up with 1266 usable words, and the final writing speed was only 569 words per hour. I had forgotten that I had a logic problem in the scene when I was dictating yesterday, so I spent some time doing brainstorming rather than writing prose, and the brainstorming words were erased when I did the cleanup edit.
On the one hand, I’m glad I got the dictation and the cleanup editing done on the same day. On the other, I’m so frustrated that my dictation isn’t getting any better.
I wonder if the exercises I do beforehand help make the dictation better? I guess I could try it and see if certain warm up exercises help me dictate better. I think my speaking speed is fine, but I have too much silence, and I am editing a lot of mistakes as I dictate, so a lot of my raw dictation words end up needing to be deleted. Some of the sentence variation exercises seemed to help me to be able to think in sentences better, so that might make the dictation smoother. I’ll give it a shot.
The high word count on my 4thewords battle report today is because I had to cut and paste a large amount of text into a new document, and 4thewords counts them as new words.
Writing streak: 272 days
Regency series:
Editing: Time spent: 47 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 2 hours, 1 minute (however, this includes time to cleanup the dictation from yesterday)
Writing: Total number of words: 2230 words (however, this includes cleaned up words from yesterday’s dictation)
Writing: time spent: 25 minutes (Regency flash fiction, includes dictation and transcription but didn’t do cleanup)
Writing: Total number of words: 805 words (but not cleaned up and much will probably need to be deleted)
Writing-related business:
Regency research reading: time spent: 28 minutes
Email: time spent: 25 minutes
Marketing: time spent: 0
My takeaway for today: The dictation exercise is a good way to write 4-komi vignettes related to my book, although I don’t know how I can use the flash fiction to help market my novels.
My second takeaway for today: I’d like to experiment and see if certain dictation exercises, like the sentence variation ones, will help me to think in sentences better and dictate more smoothly.
I am about to go out the door to walk and dictate, but I am a bit concerned. My IBS is giving me a few problems. I took medication, a few minutes ago, so it hasn't kicked in yet. I hope I'll feel better soon so that I can dictate on my walk without issues.
***
I decided to skip a dictation exercise in Fool Proof Dictation: A No-Nonsense System for Effective & Rewarding Dictation because it was to dictate a scene from two points of view. I only do one point of view per scene, so I couldn't do this exercise with my fiction projects, I would have to do something new. Or I could use my fiction as the prompt, but I would not be able to use the entire exercise in my book.
The exercise I did was a flash fiction exercise. Originally I was going to skip it. I don’t usually do a lot of flash fiction anymore, mostly because it’s really hard to use flash fiction to promote any of my full-length novels. So I always kind of considered flash fiction like wasted words when I could be working on my book instead.
But then I remembered a marketing idea I had come up with a few years ago, but never got around to doing. I had already posted the entirety of The Spinster's Christmas on my blog, but I was thinking about things I could post the next time I posted free fiction chapters. I thought it might be fun to copy something that manga artists often do for their published books. There are often extra pages because of the layout of the script, so artists will draw a humorous, short strip called a 4-komi. It's usually about something that happened in the previous chapter, but expanding it in a funny way, often in scenarios that would never be able to happen in the story world of the manga.
I thought it would be fun to write my own version of 4-komi. I could write a short vignette about something that happened in the chapter that was just posted on my blog, an improbable, funny situation as a comic side note.
However, I can’t post my Lady Wynwood's Spies series on my blog, since they are in Kindle Unlimited, and so I didn’t pursue writing any 4-komi. But I had the dictation exercise today, and I thought it would be fun to try flash fiction like a 4-komi vignette, related to my book.
I probably couldn’t post this on my blog, because I’d have to reference the book and chapter, and people would have to have read the book to get the humor of the vignette. But I suppose I'll try this anyway, since it seems fun and interesting.
I have a feeling that the purpose of the exercise is to train you to be able to visualize a scene in more detail order to dictate it, but I personally think that this sort of visualization isn't useful for me since I have already envisioned the scene when I wrote my blocking notes for it.
***
The flash fiction was actually rather fun, although as usual, it took me a while to decide how I wanted the scene to go. I guess I just take a long time when I plot a scene. And I took much longer than the 10 minutes the exercise was supposed to take. And I still didn’t quite finish the flash fiction (the middle has issues).
Still, this was rather fun. I’d be open to doing more flash fiction 4-komi vignettes related to my book, although I’d have to brainstorm what in the world I’d do with it.
***
I started my dictation, but then I remembered that I still need to do the cycling edits of the last few days dictation, so I decided to cut my writing dictation short. Also, my IBS began bothering me while I was walking, and it was difficult to dictate while I was in pain, so I turned around to head home.
I’m not sure if it’s because of the IBS, or because I only got about 48 minutes of dictation done, but the dictation today was TERRIBLE today. I kept needing to repeat sentences because they’d come out all wrong, or else I’d say something and realize it didn’t make sense, and then have to correct it. I was probably doing a lot of editing even as I was dictating.
I dictated for 48 minutes and wrote 1393 words. Transcription took 9 minutes, but cleanup editing took 20 minutes, and I ended up with only 964 usable words, so I cut a LOT. My dictation speed was 1741 words per hour, and my final writing speed (including dictation, transcription, and cleanup) was 749. I suppose I shouldn’t be so disappointed because that’s about the same speed as when I type and write, but it’s frustrating because I wanted to see more progress on my dictation.
I also did the cleanup editing on the dictation I did yesterday, since I hadn’t had time to do it last night. I ended up with 1266 usable words, and the final writing speed was only 569 words per hour. I had forgotten that I had a logic problem in the scene when I was dictating yesterday, so I spent some time doing brainstorming rather than writing prose, and the brainstorming words were erased when I did the cleanup edit.
On the one hand, I’m glad I got the dictation and the cleanup editing done on the same day. On the other, I’m so frustrated that my dictation isn’t getting any better.
I wonder if the exercises I do beforehand help make the dictation better? I guess I could try it and see if certain warm up exercises help me dictate better. I think my speaking speed is fine, but I have too much silence, and I am editing a lot of mistakes as I dictate, so a lot of my raw dictation words end up needing to be deleted. Some of the sentence variation exercises seemed to help me to be able to think in sentences better, so that might make the dictation smoother. I’ll give it a shot.
The high word count on my 4thewords battle report today is because I had to cut and paste a large amount of text into a new document, and 4thewords counts them as new words.
Writing streak: 272 days
Regency series:
Editing: Time spent: 47 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 2 hours, 1 minute (however, this includes time to cleanup the dictation from yesterday)
Writing: Total number of words: 2230 words (however, this includes cleaned up words from yesterday’s dictation)
Writing: time spent: 25 minutes (Regency flash fiction, includes dictation and transcription but didn’t do cleanup)
Writing: Total number of words: 805 words (but not cleaned up and much will probably need to be deleted)
Writing-related business:
Regency research reading: time spent: 28 minutes
Email: time spent: 25 minutes
Marketing: time spent: 0
My takeaway for today: The dictation exercise is a good way to write 4-komi vignettes related to my book, although I don’t know how I can use the flash fiction to help market my novels.
My second takeaway for today: I’d like to experiment and see if certain dictation exercises, like the sentence variation ones, will help me to think in sentences better and dictate more smoothly.
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