Day 950 - Maybe I need dictation exercises

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Since today is Saturday, I decided to dictate my writing for my contemporary contemporary romantic suspense, Year of the Dog. It was a lot more difficult than I expected. I'm not certain if it's because it's a new story, or because the language is different, or perhaps both. I only dictated for a little less than half an hour. I could have I needed another 30 minutes of dictation to finish the scene, but it was due to rain, so I decided to go home. I was going to dictate the rest of the scene while walking around my house instead, but I ended up getting distracted when I got home (argh!) and instead typed it at my desk. But I finished the scene, at least, so that’s great.

I'm glad I did the dictation, but I'm also wondering if I need to to do exercises before I start the dictation. When I was doing dictation before, I found that doing dictation exercises before jumping into the writing made it easier for me to immediately start dictating quickly, and I think my overall dictation speed was faster if I did five or 10 minutes of dictation exercises beforehand. If I did 20 or 30 minutes of dictation exercises beforehand, it was even easier for me to transition to dictating fiction.

So I think I need to once again look at doing dictation exercises before I start writing. I had a difficult time last time in deciding on writing prompts, because I felt it was incredibly inefficient to dictate flash fiction that I absolutely could not use for either of the two series I was writing. But maybe I need to rethink that in order to just have a dictation exercise to do.

I think I need to release the idea that my words are precious. In point of fact, words are cheap, especially when dictating. So if I “waste” time dictating a flash fiction that I could not use for marketing, I probably just need to accept that.

Writing streak: 429 days

Dictation streak: 5 days

My takeaway for today: I probably need to do dictation exercises before starting my dictation for the day so that when I transition to dictation my fiction, my dictation speed is faster and my dictation is smoother.

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