With all the writing I’ve been doing, I thought I’d take some time to let you into my process. It’s definitely different than I’ve seen used before. You might find it useful. You also might think that I’m batshit crazy for doing it this way. Oh well. It works for me. Also, you’ll get a super-exclusive look at first draft text of Sveidsottir!
I’ve been working away at Sveidsdottir for around a month, now. The word count is sitting at just under 49,000 words and my goal for the first draft is about 80,000. That means I need to average a little over 1.5k words a day, every weekday, to hit my goal by my deadline of the end of November. With my day job, writing regularly has been hard. So on a whim, I picked up a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking.
I originally had a setup where I wore the headset around my neck and dictated while I drove. However, I had a day where something went sideways and the program didn’t capture about 10 minutes of dictated text. Not ideal. Fortunately, I own a digital voice recorder. For the last few weeks, I’ve been dictating into it while I drive to and from work (I have an hour commute each way). Then when I get home (or am at lunch), I plug the recorder into the laptop, fire up Dragon, and press play.
I do my writing into an empty text file and use WriteMonkey when I’m actually typing. Since I’d rather not take the chance of my draft document being corrupted, I use a scratch file (another text file) as the temporary holding place for the text. When Dragon’s done recording, I copy the text from the scratch file into the main document.
Now, the dictation isn’t perfect. Far from it. This is especially true because I don’t bother using Dragon’s punctuation commands. So what goes into the text file is an unedited wall of text, as Dragon hears it. This leads to some interesting sequences of words, as you’ll soon see. And before I—no. Never mind. Just look at five minutes of dictation from my drive today. This is Sigrid’s encounter with Fenrir, at the heart of a Dwarven city.
For dream that you have earned a yellow screen weapons waiting them here I make the first move simply pictured myself over the ledge and coming up in a crouch on the next level below I looked up and watch the rest of the warriors there while they fight with the band here in the home of their enemy it’s like they’re making up for every every loss that they sustained over the years metal shrieks twists small explosions happen all around and I sit and watch did I get a sense of space that I meant of the evidence flow of the battle and I focus in on my target and we’re gets back is distant perhaps 100 200 feet it still rises and falls in a rhythmic pattern I swear it looks like breathing but that’s not my concern My concern is how I’m going to be Ascension myself drawn on my merged our the bones here assembling themselves and iPhone blue fire surrounds everything but it all to try and assembled all for blue wings of fire streaming from my back twin axes glowing in my’s I looked down from my new height and I don’t see a wall I see my great I give a battlecry and at the I don’t see the bloats up all I know is that the metal alone the first larger sites that and suddenly her I’m not back slammed against the wall I slide down crouch I looked up and I see from your way it shake shards bone office all gives of my develop you have my full height I only just top 40 feet vendors talk to me by good measure each of its key are the size of I look closely at sizing it up getting its measure as it does the same for me and I’m shocked to see not just metal but flesh when it opens its mouth scabrous Walls out in Minute Budgets
Yep.
Before you call me crazy for working with that mess, hear me out. I’ve got a great recall memory. Like, I read something I’ve written and I tend to skim over things because I assume that I’ve written them correctly. This is not an uncommon problem. In fact, writers are often encouraged to look at their first draft in a different format when they do their edits. Print it, change the pagination, something, anything to break that habit of thinking what we wrote is right because we remember it being right.
Going through a book mostly made up of big, punctuationless blocks of text like that will force me to reexamine it. I’ll have continually ask myself if what I see is what I meant to say, or to see if I could say it better. Maybe I’m giving myself more work than I need, but I think the end product will be better for this. Plus, I’m finding it easier to dictate than I am to write at a keyboard. I’m a talker by nature. The story already has a better flow (trust me, it’s in there somewhere) because I’m speaking the words. Instead of struggling trying to see what comes next, when I talk it all flows.
After I’m done with the first draft, I’ll manhandle it into a readable state, then give it to beta readers. After their comments, I’ll give it another pass. Then Amanda gets it. Then we make it shine. It’s a tough process, but I’m excited for it.
And now you see how I’m writing.