I have always been a fairly fast typist. Ever since I first learnt to put my fingers on the home keys and type without looking at them, I've picked up speed from there. I can now type without looking at the screen, never mind at my hands. And when I wore most of the letters off the keys of my last keyboard, it didn't matter to me at all.
But, I'm intrigued by the daily word counts that people who use dictation software seem to be achieving on a regular basis. Last year, I purchased a copy of Dragon on eBay, but sadly, despite the seller’s assurances, it was not compatible with my Mac. I even tried using the dictation element of Word, but ended up shouting at the computer when it consistently mocked my accent by mishearing things. I swear it was doing it on purpose.
Nevertheless, I was still intrigued by people who tell me how much they can get done during a limited period of the day just by talking to their computer rather than sitting with their fingers at the keyboard. You Lie. (That last bit the computer’s response to me giving the instruction “New line.” Hmm, is it passing comment, I wonder…?)
Yes, in case you haven’t get guessed, I’m using dictation software to write this blog. It’s my first attempt. Please bear with me.
I finally decided it was time to bite the bullet and give it a whirl, if your pub all be mixed metaphors. (Translation: if you’ll pardon all the mixed metaphors) I contacted a friend of mine who I know uses Dragon software and asked her opinion of it. She told me that she thought it was wonderful, but that last November Dragon stopped supporting their software for Mac, and now it’s stopped working. This greatly infuriated her, as she’d also been using the Voice app on her phone when she was out and then plugging it into her Mac when she got home and letting the two talk to each other. I’m not quite sure I'd be happy doing that—I think my devices might start plotting against me behind my back.
I've also found it a bit difficult when I tried using the dictation element in Word in that I kept stopping to wait for it to catch up with me. This, in turn, made me slow down and became an ever-decreasing circle. But, I recently watched a video interview with romance author, Danielle Norman. Danielle said that when she first started to write she had a form of cancer that meant it was very painful for her to physically type by hand. Dictation software was her only option and therefore she persevered.
She gave some excellent advice. First of which was to eat the elephant in small bites. Start small. Don’t go out and spend hundreds on expensive recording devices and software, but use the speech-to-text app on your phone to make short notes and go from there. Think out loud when you’re sketching out a chapter or scene, and then use that as a basis before you write.
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| I think that was supposed to be 'eating an elephant' not 'an elephant, eating' courtesy: Pixabay |
One of the best things Danielle advised was not to watch the screen while you talk. In fact, to turn away and not look at what you’re doing at all, which saves you getting distracted by the speed at which the words are appearing or not appearing on the screen in front of you. I’ve been talking this blog without looking at the screen, and have been staring fixedly at a spot on the printer by the side of my desk. It’s only when I went back to it later that I managed to see what I've typed and what I haven't.
New line (One “new line” it can cope with, but when I wanted two in a row, that clearly confused things.)
This was the first time I've tried using Google Docs and the Voice Typing element of that in order to dictate and I'm quite impressed with it so far. It seems much better than the dictation element of Word, which I tried previously. That could not get its head round my accent at all.We just ended up having arguments with each other, and when dictation software doesn't answer back that means it gets very passive aggressive. But, so far with this it's really rather good and I think I'm going to have a determined trial with it.
For one thing, it doesn't pick up the “ums” and “ahs” and the stutters but it does seem to catch the words and write them down, occasionally it mishears things but then, occasionally I mistype things so I can't hold that against him. (Hmm, I’m sure I said “it” at the end of that sentence, so VT has a gender as well as an agenda…)
New line. (Yes, I know!)
OK, so occasionally I have to be quite sharp with it because I say “new line” and it just types in those words instead of doing the action but it does seem to guess when you want to put those words in the middle of a sentence and when you actually want it to take it as a command. Danielle suggests that you don’t worry about any other forms of punctuation except ‘new line’, to simply keep talking until you reach the end of a scene or chapter, and then to revise immediately—presumably so, in case of mangling, you don’t forget what it was you actually said.
For instance, the next bit of transcription I have is: ‘proxy slight note of irritation in my voice keeps it clue’. (Honestly, I have no idea what this was supposed to read.) But considering my somewhat mongrel accent, I think it's coping remarkably well. So, the question is, can I get this to work as a means of speeding me up writing the latest book? Well, that will be an interesting one to discover. I'm going to experiment with this over the next couple of weeks and will report back.
It wasn't entirely straightforward setting this up to work on my Mac. The Voice Typing element of Google Docs is apparently not compatible with the Safari browser, so I’ve had to open up Chrome instead. But, I’m using the internal microphone of my MacBook Air and, so far, so good.
Yes, it does seem to respond that little bit better if I get snappy with it—maybe that smooths out my accent a bit? And the text does appear on the page in fits and starts, so I definitely have to look at something else when I'm writing, but actually, that's no bad thing, because quite often I'm trying to write from notes, so I can concentrate on those instead.
Danielle said she writes about 6000 words over the course of an hour or so and then tidies them up, so she ends up with probably 3000 words or finished relatively Polish text (OK, that should be ‘polished’—she doesn’t write in Polish) in a morning. If I could do the same I would be a very happy bunny.
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| Danielle Norman courtesy: DanielleNorman.com |
So, my question is, do you use dictation software of any form? Do you speak your requests into Google, or speak text messages while you’re in the car? Do you use it because you've got wrist problems or shoulder or neck or back problems? Do you use it to save time? Do you swear by dictation as a method of writing or, if you haven’t tried it, would it be something you’d consider? Have you tried it and gone back to writing by hand? I’d love to know!
This week’s Word of the Week is glossophobia, which means a fear of public speaking. It comes from the Greek, glossa meaning tongue, and phobos, fear or dread.
