Day 783: Evaluation 7

Procrastination or visualization

Earlier, I was a bit disappointed in myself because it took me a while to get started writing today. I wasn't entirely sure why, but I putzed around and procrastinated a bit. It frustrated me because I felt like I just wasted time, and I really wanted to figure out why I did that. I felt like if I could just figure out what my problem was, I could get rid of my habit of procrastinating before starting.

But then I realized that one of the reasons I procrastinated today was because I was starting a new scene, and I needed to take time to visualize a new character that was appearing. I also had to figure out how to start the scene, because I had not made that decision when I wrote the blocking notes.

So even though I was frustrated that I was procrastinating, in hindsight, I was actually taking time to think about the scene beforehand. I think I need to stop looking at that as wasting time when it was obviously important visualization work that I needed to do in order to start writing.

So in future, I'm just going to try to consider it as part of my writing time. Even though I have these detailed blocking notes, dictation at least, I think I need that visualization time in order to get started. I actually remember reading about this in Sean Platt's dictation book. He recommends visualizing the scene before dictating it. So the fact that I had to take the time to visualize the scene makes a lot of sense.

Dictating into my computer

After spending several hours setting up Dragon and Parallels on my Mac computer and training dragon to improve accuracy, I was able to dictate directly into my computer today. Rather than using a voice recorder and transcribing the MP3 file, I used a headset with a microphone and a really long cord to dictate and pace in my office.

It ended up working really well. I was able to correct my prose on the screen as I wrote it. It was really helpful because sometimes I wasn't quite certain how I wanted to word something, and I had to repeat the sentence a few times before I got it. Since I could see it on the screen, I could delete my previous iteration and dictate over it with the new wording.

In the end, I feel pretty satisfied because my rough draft today was pretty clean. I know that there are things that I'll need to clean up later, but I can do that on my last self-editing pass. It's clean enough that I don't need to spend time cleaning up the dictation like I do when I dictate into my voice recorder or even when I dictate into the Dragon Anywhere app on the phone.

I ended up dictating for an hour and 15 minutes, because I wanted to finish the scene. I thought it would only take me a few minutes, but it ended up taking me half an hour more.

Energy management

The problem is that now, I'm pretty exhausted mentally. I'm also a little tired because I was pacing in my office almost the entire time, and now my feet are a little sore because I had also gone running this morning.

I am a bit frustrated with myself because I had hoped to be able to get some writing done in the Regency book also, today. I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to get to it, because I need to do some intensive work on the outline, and it's going to be tricky. Because it's going to be a logical problem that I'll have to fix, my brain might be a little too tired for me to be able to focus.

But also I wonder if maybe I just need to build up my stamina to be able to write for longer. After all, I haven't done lots of dictation work in a long time. And today's dictation might have been a little intense because I was able to do much more exact editing on the manuscript as I was dictating, which I can't do when I use the Dragon Anywhere app on my phone.

I wonder if maybe I should try to do as little editing as possible when I dictate, so that I can use the most energy for dictation. I don't need quite as much energy for editing. I can't let the dictation be too messy or else it'll be like yesterday, and the editing will simply take too long to be worth it.

But making corrections on the screen as I was dictating today was a lot like when I edit as I go when I type and write. Earlier, I had felt that dictating into my phone allowed me to dictate when I had more energy, and edit when I had less energy. This separation of my energy states seemed to work really well for me because I could dictate a lot in a short time., and then edit when I was a little tired. As opposed to writing and editing both for the entire time, which is much more tiring.

Even though I was tired, I have to admit that I really did enjoy being able to correct my dictation errors as I was going. It made the text all nice and clean, which made me feel better about myself and about the writing.

The only reason I left some things to be edited when I was dictating into my phone was because I didn't have my Story Bible with me. But I have that with me on the computer, so I can dictate a description correctly the first time rather than making a note for myself to insert it later, and things like that. Now that I'm dictating into my computer, not only is it more accurate, but I'm able to correct things as I go.

As for accuracy, I say it's more accurate, but it's like the difference between 95% and 97%. On the computer, it's not quite trained enough and there are still errors. There are a few more errors when I dictate on the phone, but the difference between the phone and the computer is pretty minor.

I just realized that I should give myself a little bit of grace because I didn't sleep very well last night, and that might be contributing to why I am so tired. I'm grateful that I had the energy to go running as well as get some writing done.

Next steps

I guess next week I'll continue dictating into my computer (and editing on the screen as I go) and seeing how things go. The fact that I was really happy with the writing output today might be a sign that I should continue this method, even though logically it might not be the most efficient way to do things. But I think I might enjoy this method the best. This is all part of my new determination to listen to my instincts more.

Hopefully I'll be able to improve my writing stamina, or even maybe improve my dictation speed. My writing speed today was about 1100 words an hour, which isn't too bad. It isn't super fast, either, but I also didn't have to do cleanup editing afterward, and when you factor in the time I take to do the editing, my writing speed is probably about the same. Yesterday, I edited about 3000 words. It took me three hours for both the dictation and the editing, so my overall writing speed was 1000 words an hour, which is a tiny bit slower than what I did today.

This week, I wrote about 6000 words in my contemporary novel, two chapters. That's not too bad even considering two of the days this week were minimal writing days because I was doing work on my newsletter, the audiobook version of one of my books, and also setting up my new subscription service with Ream.

I'm not sure when my subscription will launch, since I want to build up a backlog of chapters, but I'm also using this time to see if I'm able to keep up with the writing pace of two chapters a week. So far, it seems very doable, and I might even be able to write more if I can build up my writing stamina and write more hours in a day. 

Sometimes I'm a bit embarrassed that it's so difficult for me to write longer than an hour or two, but when I consider how mentally tired I am afterward, I try not to be too hard on myself. That writing time usually requires very intense focus, and that takes up a lot of mental energy. But I also know from reading books like Deep Work that you can train yourself to do longer periods of focus.

Since I'm feeling so tired right now, I think what I'm going to do is some work that doesn't require a lot of mental energy, like working on my website. I have to rebuild the pages on my new hosting service, and that's taking time.

Next week will be a fresh start. I still need to set up dictation for my Regency book, but dictation is now pretty well set for my contemporary book. I set up my Dictation profile for my Regency book, I'll see if I can manage to get 1000 or 2000 words done on both books every day.