Dragon

I like to talk out loud to myself.  I'm an auditory learner and things often make more sense to me when I say or hear them.  When I'm working out plot lines and story ideas, and I'm by myself, I usually say it out loud.  I'll talk out whole scenes if I want to see how they work.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought the Dragon Naturally Speaking software.  It allows you to speak and it dictates for you.  Setting it up is easy, just a few training sessions where you say a few things for it to learn your voice and speaking patterns, and then off you go.  the more you use it, the better it becomes acclimated to your speaking patterns.  I'd played with it, but never really tried to write with it.  It's a bit awkward to get used to because if you want to write something like, "Hey, what's up?" it has to go like this: open quote hey comma what's up question mark close quote.  

Last night, I wrote more than 3500 words using Dragon.  It, surprisingly, doesn't take too long to remember to speak the punctuation marks as well.  You can edit with voice commands, too.  Sometimes, that's easy to do.  It puts the wrong word it, you say correct that, and pick the right option or spell it out.  Other times, I found it easier just to physically type the correction.  

But the thing is, I really liked using it.  It did make things a bit easier for me, getting to speak it out loud.  After I was done, I made some changes and edits manually.  But the bulk of it was on the page.  Whether it was actually faster than when I type, I'm not sure.  I type pretty fast.  But it was a fun and interesting way to get the words on the page.

You'll get to see the fruits of my labor on Monday.

Oh, and yes, if you were wondering, I do talk out loud to myself about knitting and crocheting patterns as well.  :D