Day 802: Dictation, day 17
I’m rather disappointed, I spent too long (an extra hour) doing some marketing work. It absolutely needed to be done, but it just took too long, partly because I always take so long to make decisions about things. I don’t know how to do anything about that, but there it is.
I did the cycle edit of the chapters I wrote in book 4, but I hadn’t realized that I actually hadn’t done the cycle edit on two entire chapters. It took up a little over an hour.
And then my familiar enemy reared its head, and I was procrastinating in starting the final edit. Because I hate self-editing. I know it needs to be done, since I only did a cycle edit as I was writing the rough draft. Reading through the entire book in a couple sittings really is the best way to gauge pacing and check for continuity errors.
But I never got to the final edit today. I thought maybe I could do my dictation exercise for today and five minutes of dictation on my manuscript (book 5), but I ended up dictating almost half an hour. I just kind of got on a roll, and my dictation speed was 3100 words an hour. My final writing speed, taking into account both the dictation time and the cleanup editing time, was 1300 words an hour, which is rather good.
However, I fully admit I probably did extra dictation simply to procrastinate doing the edit. So I will have to knuckle down and do the edit tomorrow.
The dictation itself didn’t go too badly today. I did a warmup exercise of free writing for 5 minutes, and I tried not to stop dictating. It’s still really hard for me, even for a simple free writing exercise.
I did a second dictation exercise of using short sentences to dictate part of a scene from my Regency side novel. I know I had said before I didn’t want to muddle my brain with a second story, but a lot of dictation exercises are made for either short pieces of fiction or nonfiction pieces.
I’ve done the nonfiction writing prompts, but I have always found them rather pointless. If I’m going to describe a picture, I want it to have something to do with the book I’m writing. I am reluctant to do either nonfiction or short fiction pieces because for both of them, honestly, I don’t know what to do with them once I’ve written them. And I hate doing writing that’ll just sit on my computer. I’d rather spend the time writing something that I might actually be able to use for one of my books.
So I’m back to using my Regency side novel as the prompt for my dictation exercises. It actually isn’t bad, especially since I’m still using the same language (since they’re the same genre). I still found myself pausing more than I wanted to. And when I went to dictating my book, I still found myself pausing a lot as I tried to think what to say next.
I think if I’d had more time to do dictation exercises and then dictating my book, I might have been able to relax my brain a bit more so that I would just dictate the first thing I thought of instead of anxiously reaching for what to write next. I found myself forgetting to do that a lot, which caused me to pause a lot.
But my dictation speed was over 3000 words per hour, which was great, and my final dictation speed was pretty fast (for me). I’ll just keep doing the dictation exercises and practicing so that I can hopefully get faster.
I think I also need to start spending more time on the cycle edit. When doing the cleanup, I noticed sometimes that the language is very plain, and I had to gild it a bit. I think it’s the dictation that causes that to happen. When I type and write, I have more time to twist turns of phrase and come up with better ways of phrasing things.
I really hope that as I dictate more, I’ll be able to craft those turns of phrase even while dictating, instead of only while typing. I think that it just takes practice, since I’m still working on retraining my brain to send the words from my head to my mouth.
Also, since I’m focusing on not stopping, sometimes I just say something simple, which is adequate but not eloquent, and often not quite what I want to say. I hope that as I practice more, I’ll learn to relax my mind and maybe allow for more uninhibited creativity, which might solve the simplicity problem.
Writing streak: 281 days
I did the cycle edit of the chapters I wrote in book 4, but I hadn’t realized that I actually hadn’t done the cycle edit on two entire chapters. It took up a little over an hour.
And then my familiar enemy reared its head, and I was procrastinating in starting the final edit. Because I hate self-editing. I know it needs to be done, since I only did a cycle edit as I was writing the rough draft. Reading through the entire book in a couple sittings really is the best way to gauge pacing and check for continuity errors.
But I never got to the final edit today. I thought maybe I could do my dictation exercise for today and five minutes of dictation on my manuscript (book 5), but I ended up dictating almost half an hour. I just kind of got on a roll, and my dictation speed was 3100 words an hour. My final writing speed, taking into account both the dictation time and the cleanup editing time, was 1300 words an hour, which is rather good.
However, I fully admit I probably did extra dictation simply to procrastinate doing the edit. So I will have to knuckle down and do the edit tomorrow.
The dictation itself didn’t go too badly today. I did a warmup exercise of free writing for 5 minutes, and I tried not to stop dictating. It’s still really hard for me, even for a simple free writing exercise.
I did a second dictation exercise of using short sentences to dictate part of a scene from my Regency side novel. I know I had said before I didn’t want to muddle my brain with a second story, but a lot of dictation exercises are made for either short pieces of fiction or nonfiction pieces.
I’ve done the nonfiction writing prompts, but I have always found them rather pointless. If I’m going to describe a picture, I want it to have something to do with the book I’m writing. I am reluctant to do either nonfiction or short fiction pieces because for both of them, honestly, I don’t know what to do with them once I’ve written them. And I hate doing writing that’ll just sit on my computer. I’d rather spend the time writing something that I might actually be able to use for one of my books.
So I’m back to using my Regency side novel as the prompt for my dictation exercises. It actually isn’t bad, especially since I’m still using the same language (since they’re the same genre). I still found myself pausing more than I wanted to. And when I went to dictating my book, I still found myself pausing a lot as I tried to think what to say next.
I think if I’d had more time to do dictation exercises and then dictating my book, I might have been able to relax my brain a bit more so that I would just dictate the first thing I thought of instead of anxiously reaching for what to write next. I found myself forgetting to do that a lot, which caused me to pause a lot.
But my dictation speed was over 3000 words per hour, which was great, and my final dictation speed was pretty fast (for me). I’ll just keep doing the dictation exercises and practicing so that I can hopefully get faster.
I think I also need to start spending more time on the cycle edit. When doing the cleanup, I noticed sometimes that the language is very plain, and I had to gild it a bit. I think it’s the dictation that causes that to happen. When I type and write, I have more time to twist turns of phrase and come up with better ways of phrasing things.
I really hope that as I dictate more, I’ll be able to craft those turns of phrase even while dictating, instead of only while typing. I think that it just takes practice, since I’m still working on retraining my brain to send the words from my head to my mouth.
Also, since I’m focusing on not stopping, sometimes I just say something simple, which is adequate but not eloquent, and often not quite what I want to say. I hope that as I practice more, I’ll learn to relax my mind and maybe allow for more uninhibited creativity, which might solve the simplicity problem.
Writing streak: 281 days
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