I’m currently typing this on my MacBook Air. Well, not really typing per se, but rather dictating.
This is something that I’ve experimented with in the past a little, but the software was lacking and expensive so it was a big barrier to entry. So like most writers, I just started typing even though I hate typing. I am not a fast typist. I’m good enough, I’d say. But it’s a real chore and I type for a living as a programmer anyway, tons of emails and whatnot, so with all that typing, I’m pretty much done with typing by the end of the day.
My problem has been figuring out what I want to say quickly enough for this stupid software to continue transcribing. If the pause it too long, it stops transcribing and I have to start over again. I feel rushed. I can’t contemplate things. I can’t formulate my thoughts and ideas properly weight of taking clock so to speak.
But talking is so much faster for me, naturally. Just asked my wife (for real). But in all seriousness, talking is easier and I am able to elucidate better especially when I can take these pauses, which is what people do when they formulating thoughts. And this was a precluding factor, moving toward a transcription of a voice transcription instead of just manually typing as I’ve done in the past. But with this most recent tech that’s come out, Siri dictation for example, add with AI in the mix, plus its ability to pause without quitting and I think this might be game-changing.
Now this text is a bit rambling and I understand that, and this is kind of by design because I am just testing this out live in real time in front of your reading eyes at this point, but I believe this could revolutionize everything for me. It would significantly reduce typing. And that’s the real issue with things is the typing. I don’t like it and it is the thing that keeps me from telling the story.
It’s also limiting. The story is typically racing through my head at a brake neck pace, and I can’t get my fingers to move fast enough to type out dialogue or to capture all that’s going through my head in general. I think that if I can utilize Dictation to get the text, mostly correct then editing should be minimal which means minimal typing and minimal hard labor so to speak.
I recognize there’s some barrier that keeps me from diving back into writing. The new job, that was one reason, but that isn’t a reason to not write at all. I’ve had multiple things come up this year, which happens and that’s fine, but still not a good reason to, not be writing. So I’ve been asking myself candidly what stopping me? Maybe dictation is the thing that opens up the productivity floodgates for me in terms of writing. I suppose we’ll see.