Day 795: Dictation, day 12
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m going to try to reduce the amount of time I spend on blogging. I’ll still blog about my dictation experience, however, since I need to blog about it in order to figure out ways to improve.
But I decided not to post my writing times and word counts anymore, since probably no one but me cares and it takes a little bit of time to calculate that stuff. I’ll just post my 4thewords battle report, since the website generates the graphic for me and it's easy to post it.
I again had a late start this morning, this time because I didn’t sleep well, so I ended up turning off my alarm and oversleeping. I decided to skip my marketing today, although I still did my other “frogs."
I managed to leave the house on time to go walking and dictating. I decided that I didn't really like using a different manuscript for the dictation exercises. I have been trying to focus only on the one book, and having the other in my head was making my brain feel too crowded. So I decided to try to do the dictation exercises using my current work in progress. It will be similar to dictating the scene several times, because I will dictate the scene first as an exercise, and then dictate it normally for my writing time. But I am hoping that it will only help the prose, and I would like to reduce the amount of clutter in my head.
I decided to do the dictation exercise I skipped yesterday, which was going through a scene (of a flash fiction, I guess) three times, increasing the duration of the dictation each time. The first pass was mostly just reading from my blocking notes, but I also was able to edit the notes with changes that needed to be made to the scene.
But like yesterday, my IBS was quite bad. I had taken medication before leaving the house, but the IBS grew worse while I was out walking and dictating, and finally I decided to cut the walk short and return home.
I was going to skip the transcription and cleanup editing, but ended up doing it after dinner when I felt a bit better. Unfortunately, I started feeling sick right around the tail end of the cleanup editing, so I’m worried that the cleanup wasn’t very thorough because I was anxious to get it done.
I’m a bit disappointed in the dictation today—my words per hour rate was slower than yesterday—but I hadn’t been feeling very well, so I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Doing the dictation didn’t feel any easier today, but I also wasn’t feeling very well and wasn’t able to really focus on improving my dictation skills. I did make an effort to speak more slowly and enunciate better, and I think the transcription was much more accurate.
However, I also made a lot of mistakes. I dictated a setting and some dialogue, then changed my mind about where the setting should be because my character would take more pains to go unnoticed, which also meant I had to redo the dialogue. As a result of redoing things, I ended up deleting a lot of what I dictated. That’s so frustrating! I’d like to be able to dictate cleanly, without needing to delete so much!
Tomorrow is Saturday, so I’m doing work on my Hawaii book instead. Since that is more revision of my original manuscript, I probably won’t do dictation tomorrow, although I’ll try to do some exercises anyway.
Writing streak: 274 days
But I decided not to post my writing times and word counts anymore, since probably no one but me cares and it takes a little bit of time to calculate that stuff. I’ll just post my 4thewords battle report, since the website generates the graphic for me and it's easy to post it.
I again had a late start this morning, this time because I didn’t sleep well, so I ended up turning off my alarm and oversleeping. I decided to skip my marketing today, although I still did my other “frogs."
I managed to leave the house on time to go walking and dictating. I decided that I didn't really like using a different manuscript for the dictation exercises. I have been trying to focus only on the one book, and having the other in my head was making my brain feel too crowded. So I decided to try to do the dictation exercises using my current work in progress. It will be similar to dictating the scene several times, because I will dictate the scene first as an exercise, and then dictate it normally for my writing time. But I am hoping that it will only help the prose, and I would like to reduce the amount of clutter in my head.
I decided to do the dictation exercise I skipped yesterday, which was going through a scene (of a flash fiction, I guess) three times, increasing the duration of the dictation each time. The first pass was mostly just reading from my blocking notes, but I also was able to edit the notes with changes that needed to be made to the scene.
But like yesterday, my IBS was quite bad. I had taken medication before leaving the house, but the IBS grew worse while I was out walking and dictating, and finally I decided to cut the walk short and return home.
I was going to skip the transcription and cleanup editing, but ended up doing it after dinner when I felt a bit better. Unfortunately, I started feeling sick right around the tail end of the cleanup editing, so I’m worried that the cleanup wasn’t very thorough because I was anxious to get it done.
I’m a bit disappointed in the dictation today—my words per hour rate was slower than yesterday—but I hadn’t been feeling very well, so I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Doing the dictation didn’t feel any easier today, but I also wasn’t feeling very well and wasn’t able to really focus on improving my dictation skills. I did make an effort to speak more slowly and enunciate better, and I think the transcription was much more accurate.
However, I also made a lot of mistakes. I dictated a setting and some dialogue, then changed my mind about where the setting should be because my character would take more pains to go unnoticed, which also meant I had to redo the dialogue. As a result of redoing things, I ended up deleting a lot of what I dictated. That’s so frustrating! I’d like to be able to dictate cleanly, without needing to delete so much!
Tomorrow is Saturday, so I’m doing work on my Hawaii book instead. Since that is more revision of my original manuscript, I probably won’t do dictation tomorrow, although I’ll try to do some exercises anyway.
Writing streak: 274 days
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