I type, Squiders. When I write, I sit down at a computer, open a word processing document (or the blog window, I guess), and go to it. (Or get distracted by the Internet. Dang you, Internet, you double-edged sword.)
But, sometimes, it’s hard to find time to sit down and write. And my laptop is getting older, so sometimes it takes a few minutes to get up and running. And sometimes it hurts my neck because invariably I’ve picked some place stupid to write and have been typing away with terrible posture.
So every now and then I consider other options.
I do handwrite sometimes, but I’m not terribly fast at it and I find it hard to really get going. (I do find that outlining or brainstorming on paper can be more efficient, however.)
I had a dictation program that I used for a bit right after the largest of the mobile ones was born. It still involves sitting at a computer, and there’s a learning curve while the program learns how you talk. Also it hated all my nonstandard fantasy names. So there was still a lot of fiddling to fix up what the program heard wrong. Which kind of eliminated the usefulness of using the dictation program. Also, I’m pretty sure said mobile one broke the headset that came with it, so that’s a bit of a problem.
There’s another option which I have not previously tried, and that’s recording and typing it up (or having someone else type it up) later. Kevin J. Anderson, who is a very nice person and a very proficient author, works this way. He goes for hikes out in the wilderness, talking into a recording device as he goes, and comes home with two or three hours worth of story, which he sends to his transcriptionist to type up.
Of course, some of us don’t have two or three hours to wander around talking to ourselves in the forest, but I admit the idea intrigues me. I could maybe do it while I folded laundry, or cooked dinner. Or maybe in patches when I find myself with a spare 15 minutes.
My biggest worry is voice. I don’t talk like I write, and it seems like it would be awkward to learn how to tell stories out loud in a way that could be supplemented by (or supplementing) writing on the computer.
Of course, I haven’t tried. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard.
I looked at audio recording apps for my phone, which seems most convenient (since I have my phone with me most of the time) but there was a ton of them, and I got overwhelmed and ran off.
Have you tried recording a story and then transcribing it later? How did it work? Or do you know of a writer that works that way that has talked about their process?
