Day 887: 365 day writing streak

I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I miscounted my days and my 365 writing streak was yesterday! I didn’t notice it until this morning when I discovered I’d forgotten to count two days before.

So, yesterday was 365 consecutive days of writing at least 100 words in my manuscript every single day! It was really hard, especially on days I felt sick. But even when my IBS was particularly bad, I always had at least 10 minutes here or there when the pain or nausea would subside temporarily, and so I whipped out my phone and wrote 100 words.

It was especially easy to do because I write in 4thewords, and so the most recent chapter I’m working on is saved online at the website, and I can access it anywhere. It’s also easy to start a battle with a 100-word monster and then stop when the monster is defeated.

100 words a day is really not very much, so it’s easy to do, although it would take a long time to write a book that way. But just the act of getting my head into my manuscript every day made it easier to get back into writing the scene when I was feeling better, so I didn’t lose any momentum. And even when I’m sick, I aimed for 100 words but usually wrote more, and a few hundred words a day added up over time to an entire scene, even during times when the IBS was bad for several weeks. So I kept moving forward in adding words to my manuscript no matter how bad I felt.

I summed up the bulk of my thoughts on writing streaks here, if you’re interested in reading it.

Dictation, day 50

As I mentioned before, I’ve been procrastinating a lot before starting dictation. I’m not entirely sure why, but I have a feeling it’s because the act of dictation is just a lot harder than typing is for me. It requires a lot of mental effort.

So I thought I might try to alleviate some of that mental effort by dictating directly into my manuscript (as opposed to into an MP3 recording and having Dragon transcribe it). One of the most difficult parts of dictation is needing to remember exactly what I’d dictated before. I’m just not used to not seeing what I just wrote. Even on an Alphasmart, I can at least see the last 4 lines. I thought I’d at least try dictating into my manuscript today to give it a shot.

Another reason is that it’s easier for me to open up my manuscript on my computer and start typing, without all the procrastination I’ve been battling. So I thought if I could pull up my manuscript, it might help stop procrastination of my dictation.

***

That was perfectly awful! I didn’t have Dragon installed in the computer I’m using, so I used Siri. However, the accuracy of the dictation was in the toilet even though I spoke almost as slowly as if I typed it and tried to enunciate. It simply ended up being more work to do the cleanup than if I had typed it.

I can try it on a different computer that has Dragon installed, but it’s more work to set that up and use it, and the whole point was to try to reduce the resistance to starting work.

So I decided simply to type the rest of the time rather than dictate any longer. It wasn’t hard to get started on work, which was a blessing since I’ve had to battle procrastination so much the past few weeks.

My writing speed wasn’t as good as yesterday, although I did notice that it slowed down the later in the day it became. I did three writing sessions, and the first one was fastest at 1200 words per hour while the last was slowest at 700 words per hour. So speed might have been influenced by the time of day. I was still suffering from IBS discomfort in the middle of the day, which is why I did three short sessions rather than one long one.

It was significantly less stressful to type rather than dictate. I don’t even know WHY dictation is stressful. Maybe because it’s uncomfortable since it involves speaking, and being an introvert, I don’t talk much normally. I certainly don’t talk to myself when I’m at home.

The large amount of words I can dictate was nice, but I’m starting to think that typing is just more enjoyable for me. Actually, part of the reason I prefer typing is because I don’t have to do cleanup editing of the dictation, which is a huge chore to do. I have to try all kinds of tricks to get myself to do the cleanup editing.

However, I'm not entirely ready to throw in the towel on dictation just yet. My health has been preventing me from dictating consistently, so I don’t really feel like I’ve given it enough effort.

Another thing that I realized today after typing was that I became more aware of the use of my hands. if I want to reach higher word counts each day, I can’t see myself typing for so long every day on end. I don’t think my wrists could handle that much repetitive stress.

So I have good reasons to try to make the dictation work, even though it’s been very hard. I might just need to find a way to push through the difficulties, and I might find that the dictation works really well for me.

Writing streak: 366 days

My takeaway for today: If I try to dictate into my manuscript, I’m going to have to do it on my other computer that has Dragon, Siri just isn’t accurate enough.

My second takeaway for today: While typing is less emotionally stressful (at least for now), it also made me aware that if I try to aim for higher word counts, I don’t think I could handle the repetitive stress on my hands and wrists, so I may just need to try to make dictation work if I want to reach my goal of writing faster.