I have a love-hate relationship with dictating. I think best with a pen in my hand, and second-best with my fingers on a keyboard. Far behind comes turning my thoughts into spoken words.
As a law student and young attorney, I had to write many memos and legal briefs. Most of these documents included a lot of case citations and quotes from judicial opinions, as well as my own legal analysis. Many courts have specific rules on formatting and strong preferences on the spacing in legal citations.
When I started out, I typically wrote my documents out in longhand, including all the legal citations and trying to show the appropriate formatting and spacing in my writing. However, the secretaries in the law offices where I worked vastly preferred transcribing from dictation to reading my handwriting. My handwriting has always been neat, but it is very small. And as I drafted and revised my documents, I typically made many interlineations that the administrative staff had to interpret. It wasn’t unusual to see one of them cricking her neck sideways to read what I’d put in the margins.
So, in order to placate the secretaries, I frequently dictated my longhand drafts.
As I gained some experience, I realized this was inefficient. I also grew more confident in my ability to dictate a plausible first draft from a detailed outline. Then I began dictating my first drafts and saved my interlineations for when I edited the typed copy I received back from my assistant.
By the time I had practiced law for about eight years, personal computers began to be seen on attorneys’ desks. I actually relished their arrival, as I could see the benefits of typing my own first drafts (though I was a lousy typist at the time).
But many lawyers never did figure out what the darn contraptions were for. I knew one attorney who wouldn’t even open an email. If the information wasn’t in the subject line he could see on the screen without touching the keyboard, he’d come ask me what I wanted to tell him.
At that time, attorneys were not expected to type their own work, but many started to do so. Including me—I went back to the days when I was handwriting my first drafts, only now I typed them.
Over time, I got so I could type faster than I could dictate, with fewer errors and omissions to correct. Often, I would type my rough draft and send it to the support staff to clean up and format properly. Soon, however, I could start with a good template and do most of the work myself. I still dictated letters and other documents I could do off the top of my head, but not longer documents.
I’m still not sure whether typing the documents was a good use of my time or not. But it got the job done, and I think I was reasonably productive.
And when email supplanted memos as primary vehicles of corporate communication, I did almost all my own typing, hardly ever asking a secretary to create a document for me. If my assistant kept my calendar and ran interference for me, I was happy to type away.
My laptop. I don’t go anywhere without it.
Now, as an author, I am glad I can type accurately and format documents appropriately. I type my own novel drafts for my critique groups. I revise my drafts over and over until they are suitable for publication. I also type my blog posts and occasional letters and, of course, the emails that are ubiquitous in all professional communications.
But now I am exploring the possibility of dictating the first draft of my new work in progress. I want to increase the speed at which I create words. I’ve already turned to dictating most text messages and many emails. It’s just faster, particularly when compared to trying to type accurately with one finger on the teensy digital keyboard on my smartphone.
I dictated the first draft of this blog post. It required a lot of clean-up, but I had a rough draft to work with, and I always try to edit my blog posts before I upload them anyway.
To dictate, I’m using the Speechnotes by WellSource app for my Android phone. It skips some words, and its spelling is atrocious—every time my character sighs, it comes out that she “side.”
In addition, I can’t send the transcription directly from Speechnotes into Scrivener. But there is a button on the app I can use to quickly email the rough text to myself. Then I copy and paste it from email into Scrivener on my laptop, and make the revisions. Only then do I have usable text.
Does this save time? I’m not sure.
But the revision process isn’t entirely wasted time. Having to go through the text with a fine-toothed comb allows me another opportunity to make changes. That way, every scene in my novel and every blog post gets at least two pass-throughs before anyone by me sees it.
Maybe, just maybe, the first draft of my current work-in-progress will be better than in earlier books. I can hope.
So I’ve gone back and forth between writing (or typing) my first drafts and dictating them for about forty years. And I’m still trying to find the most effective way to get thoughts out of my head and on to paper (or screen).
Writers, how have you increased your productivity?
