Day 1050 - Dictation with Dragon Anywhere

On Sunday, I was again put in a position where I didn’t have blocking notes for the next scene to dictate. I had been thinking I would simply dictate some brainstorming for my Hawaii book, but I realized that wouldn’t be dictation practice for writing prose.

I ended up doing more blocking work yesterday than I had intended. There were a couple co-op battles (multi-player monster battles) on 4thewords.com, and since the type of monster being battled is usually up to pure luck, I decided to jump into the battle since I needed to fight those monsters to complete a quest.

I don’t usually do long hours of writing work on Sundays, which is supposed to be my rest day, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to fight those monsters. I have found that 4thewords is usually more active on weekends than weekdays, and I need other players in order to participate in co-op battles.

So I ended up working on the blocking for the next scene for almost 2 hours. I did the co-op monsters I needed for the quest, and I was almost done blocking the entire scene, so I simply finished it using regular monsters.

As a result, the scene was blocked properly and so I did about 5 minutes of dictation on the beginning of the scene. I used Dragon Anywhere on my phone since I was intending to only dictate for about 5 minutes, and it was too much hassle to use my digital recorder and then transcribe using Dragon Naturally Speaking on my ancient Mac Mini. Dragon Anywhere isn’t as good at recognizing when I use the proper names of my characters, but it’s okay if I have to correct names in only about 150-200 words.

I have to admit that dictating in my phone using Dragon Anywhere was really nice. Maybe because I’m using the microphone on my phone, I find myself slowing down and speaking more clearly, and so the dictation is pretty clean when it’s transcribed on the screen.

I still find myself editing myself as I dictate—I’ll start a sentence and find that I want to change it a little starting a few words back. But instead of correcting it on the screen, I’ll just insert a trigger word (mine is “asterisk”) and repeat the part with the change.

I probably shouldn’t be correcting myself. Usually when writing coaches teach about eliminating the internal editor, they tell you to not bother to backspace but to leave the writing and tell yourself you’ll fix it later in edits.

But I hate self-editing, and dictation already makes the writing have myriad mistakes. I don’t always notice the sentences where I need additional editing (which is a vague way of saying that my self-editing is lazy and sloppy).

Since my writing in general is more elegant and stronger when my rough draft is cleaner, I have been finding myself correcting myself a lot when I dictate. I have been trying to combat my errors by trying to think more before I speak and speaking more slowly, but that doesn’t always happen since I don’t always pay attention to how I’m talking.

Also thinking a lot before I speak still slows down my dictation, even moreso than when I correct myself as I dictate. I actually write faster if I just dictate and correct as I go rather than trying to think of the sentence and then speaking it the right way the first time.

But I am still hoping that as I practice dictation, I’ll get better at it and not make those mistakes as much. If I can get my brain to think a little faster, maybe I’ll have corrected the sentence in my head before I speak it. Or it could be that I’m too dependent upon hearing the sounds of the words first, before I realize it’s not what I want to say. If I can make those judgments when the words are still in my brain, then I’ll be able to speak the correct ones the first time around.

I’m hoping that those are abilities that I simply just need to practice a bit more, and that I’ll be able to master them eventually.

But even if I don’t, and my dictation never becomes as fast as I would like it to be, I still find that dictation forces me to focus intently for longer periods of time so that I get more words done than I would have if I were typing, because I tend to be more distracted when I’m typing. I suppose it’s not as easy to distract me when I’m dictating since I have to concentrate so hard to speak the words.

But also I realized that the words are coming out so fast that I’m getting through the scene a lot faster than if I were typing, even if I were typing at full speed. So maybe it’s also that my brain is more engaged since the story is progressing so quickly as I dictate. If I type for an hour, I get to a certain point in a scene at the end of the hour. But if I dictate for 30 minutes, I get to the same point in the scene in half the time, and then spend 30 minutes going back over the scene and editing what I’d written.

***

I didn’t get much work done yesterday (Monday) because I had a lot of homework to do for a class I’m taking for the next 4 weeks. I also wasn’t feeling all that great—I had a small flare-up earlier in the day, which cut my walk (and my dictation) short, and after the symptoms eased down, I was tired and lethargic and never went back to doing more dictation.

I don’t want to be the kind of person who gives up too easily, but I find myself being too strongly influenced by how my body is feeling. If I don’t feel well enough, I don’t want to work. Even if I do want to work, if I don’t feel well enough, it’s distracting and I have a difficult time.

I’m also busy doing stuff in preparation for my book releasing next week, so I did get some other work done for that, but not a lot of writing work. I also will have more to do later this week because of the release, and when combined with the class I’m taking, maybe I shouldn’t depend upon writing a lot, at least for this week and next week.

Today was similar to yesterday in that I had a lot of homework (more even than yesterday), as well as a lot of stuff I needed to do for the release. I only did the bare minimum of writing today via dictation into Dragon Anywhere.

The more I use Dragon Anywhere, the more I realize how incredibly useful it is. The dictation is very clean, maybe because I have the latest iPhone, and the microphone is very good. Also, it allows you to customize your vocabulary, so I inputted all the proper names I use often, and I was able to train how I pronounce those names. Dragon Anywhere does a decent job on the names, and only messes up when I don’t enunciate clearly or when I speak too quietly. Also, I’m using it in my office with the door closed, so there’s no ambient noise to muddle the transcription.

The only problem with Dragon Anywhere is that my words are immediately visible on the screen. For some people that’s what they would prefer, and a few months ago, I might have said the same. However I’ve been noticing that when I see my words on the screen, I’m more likely to go back to correct what I just dictated, since I can see the mistake glaring at me. When I dictate into my voice recorder, I can’t correct it, so I just keep going. In that sense, I think I spend less time editing, and I might even not go into self-editing mode as often when I use my voice recorder.

So while Dragon Anywhere is incredibly helpful, I think in general it’s better for me to use my voice recorder for longer dictation sessions. I think I’m more efficient and dictate a bit faster.