Day 952 - Technical difficulties with dictation

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I had a bad IBS flareup this morning, which made it difficult to concentrate, so I decided to do some marketing rather than writing first thing. I ended up getting a lot of marketing done, which was great. However, my IBS never really got much better as the day went on.

My IBS is still bothering me even though it is close to dinner, and so I decided to do a little bit of dictation now, even though I feel some discomfort. A little bit of dictation is better than nothing. I'm not sure how much I will be able to dictate, but at the very least I can do my cycling edit of the dictation from last week Friday. I am also almost at the end of the scene, and if the dictation isn't going too badly, I will hopefully do more than just the bare minimum and try to finish it.

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I’m so frustrated! I lost 30 minutes of dictation because I had forgotten to make sure my digital recorder was recording (it was not). I had to redo it, which took less time than before, but that’s still 30 minutes wasted.

On top of that, I had computer issues and had a hard time getting Windows and then Dragon to load.

On the positive side, I felt a bit more comfortable while doing the dictation today. I’m still slow, and I figured out it was because I think about what I want to say before I say it. However, I’m starting to get better about just saying something, and then repeating it until I say exactly what I want to say. That seems to work better than trying to think of it in my head before speaking. Every time I repeat myself I say “asterisk” to insert an asterisk in my manuscript, because I absolutely never use asterisks in my novels, and it’s easy to do a search for them. That way I can tell myself I’m about to repeat what I just wrote. I end up deleting a lot, but I think I more easily figure out what I want to say when I do the repeating thing.

In a previous blog post (was it Saturday?) I had mentioned I thought I needed to do some dictation exercises before starting my dictation, so I did a stream-of-consciousness exercise today. I’m not really certain how much it helped with my dictation. Still, I suppose a dictation warmup isn’t a bad thing. I was re-reading Fool Proof Dictation: A No-Nonsense System for Effective & Rewarding Dictation by Christopher Downing and remembered that the author suggests reading a few passages from a novel in the genre you’re writing to help you get back into the right vocabulary and pacing for dictating your novel. I think I’ll do that tomorrow.

And now it is very late. I think I will skip my cycle edit today and just do the cleanup edit on the scene.

Writing streak: 431 days

Dictation streak: 7 days

My takeaway for today: Remember to check your recorder is recording, moron!

My second takeaway for today: Try reading a novel in my genre as a dictation warmup exercise.

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