Day 946 - Dictation again?

I reconnected with a writing friend today and it was really, really great. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed talking about writing stuff with someone.

She also motivated me to try dictation again because she’s been forced to use it for the past several years. It’s really hard NOT to be motivated when she talks about writing 10,000 words in one day.

I had been concerned that my writing via dictation is simply not as elegant as my writing via typing, but there was one thing I realized during the past week or so of vacation when I was doing only the bare minimum of writing on my manuscript—I think that my editing has gotten better.

My writing on the current scene wasn’t very good since I was writing while with my family, with lots of noise and distractions. So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that I had to edit it a lot afterward. I ended up doing several passes over what I’d written—mostly because I was only doing 5 minutes of work on my manuscript each day, just to keep up my bare minimum. However, with each pass, the manuscript kept changing, until at last I was happy with the way the writing had turned out.

Right now, the clean-up editing when I dictate takes about the same amount of time as the dictation, although I’m also doing a bit of self-editing in addition to the cleanup. I think that if I also do the cycling editing—starting each day by editing what I’d written the day before—that additional self-editing pass might improve the writing to be closer to when I type. Right now, I’m doing the cycling editing over what I’ve written via typing.

So I think I might try the dictation again today. It’s a bit late in the day because I had a lot of house chores to do today, in addition to the appointment to talk to my friend, so I feel a bit guilty that I didn’t get any writing work done yet.

***

I got 30 minutes dictation done before I was interrupted, and issues with my computer prevented me from getting any more writing done before bed. The dictation was slow—as I would have expected—but not terrible. I think I also did a decent job on the clean-up editing. At least, I know I wasn’t as lazy and I paid more attention to detail.

I think I’ll continue trying this again. I’ll have to see when I do my final self-edit if my writing is still not as good when I dictate. I am hoping I’ll get better, and that my self-editing will be better so that I can make the dictation writing more elegant.

Writing streak: 425 days

My takeaway for today: Trying the dictation again because I think my editing has gotten better.