Day 880: Dictation, day 48

After several weeks of being sick, now that I’m feeling better, my self-discipline is in the toilet. I stayed up too late last night and ended up sleeping through my alarm again this morning, so I had another late start to the day.

I was going to try to do my writing right after getting back from exercise, but I’ve been feeling bad that other important things have been not getting done lately. Usually, there are things I do as my “frogs” first thing (exercise is one of them) because if I don’t do them first, then I never get around to doing them at all during the day. That’s just how I am—I’m usually too tired to get to them after I’ve finished my writing for the day. So many of those things haven’t been getting done recently, and while they’re not urgent, they’re still important. Things like house chores (because really, I can only stand so long before the floor has to be mopped and the shower has to be cleaned).

So I did my “frogs” this morning before writing, and I admit I felt a lot better. It’s kind of like when you clean your desk before work and your brain feels less cluttered. But because of that, I didn’t get started on my writing until even later in the day.

My procrastination has been bad lately, probably because I wasn’t working very much while I was sick. So I procrastinated a little bit before I started my writing work. I was considering just typing my writing rather than using dictation, but I reminded myself that I want to practice dictation more so that I get better at it. Also, I set a goal of only 30 minutes of dictation each day since that’s easy to do and the low goal also helps stop the procrastination. It definitely helped me to get started today after only a few minutes procrastinating.

The dictation wasn’t great today. I did 38 minutes and finished the scene I was working on, and stopped since that was a good stopping point. However, my dictation speed was only about 2500 words per hour, and the cleanup editing took almost 50% more time than the dictation, so the combination of dictation and editing took a total of 90 minutes. While I deleted a lot of words, I also ended up adding a lot, so my total words increased to about 1700. Taking both dictation and editing times into account, my average writing speed was 1100 words per hour. That’s not terrible, although it’s about average for when I type and write.

I’m still not dictating/cleanup editing faster than when I type. Do I just need to practice more to increase my dictation speed? I guess I shouldn’t be impatient since I haven’t done a lot of consecutive days of dictation—I usually take several days off in between. So while I’ve done a total of 48 days of dictation, I haven’t actually dictated more than 7 or 8 days in a row.

My dictation is still full of silence since I always have to think about what to say next. I really need to remember to simply say the first thing that comes to mind. Even if it’s wrong, I can keep repeating myself until it sounds right. And maybe eventually I’ll be able to think faster so that the first thing I think is the right thing? I don’t know.

I really don’t know how to improve my dictation. I guess I’ll have to do some more searching online for articles.

Writing streak: 359 days

My takeaway for today: My dictation practice isn’t as effective if I keep taking days off in between, so try to aim for more consecutive days of dictation.

My second takeaway for today: Remember to simply dictate the first thing that comes to mind. Even if it’s wrong, just keep repeating yourself until it sounds right.