Dictation

Dictation using wax cylinder phonographAs I close out the Compact Universe series (Don’t worry, you’ve got a year to go before Storming Amargosa comes out), I’ve been trying different ways of writing to get through the last four installments. While The Amortals was basically a rewrite of an earlier planned novella, I opted to write Storming‘s first draft as a screenplay and The Exile in longhand. So that leaves Flight Blade as the last Compact Universe story to be written.

I’m going to try dictation with Flight Blade. My morning routine is about to get disrupted, so now is as good a time as any to try dictation again. I have Google Docs on my phone, so I can dictate into that before I go to work, and then go back later in the day and fix the inevitable errors. I also can use Word’s speech-to-text function.

I tried to do dictation before. A lot of people who seem to sell more books about writing than books about anything else raved about it. In the end, I actually slowed down. I type fast. It’s what I do. The crime novel I’m working on between Compact Universe installments flows rather quickly when I type.

But there were things I did wrong in the great Dragon experiment. I always stopped and corrected everything I wrote. I don’t do that when I write by hand. I also had to get used to talking my story out. It just wasn’t a good experience.

I’ll try it again. It can’t hurt, and it might help me get Flight Blade written quickly. And that’s what it’s all about.