#400 - Dictation Improvements

I got bed around 2AM last night after finishing my 8000-word quota.

I heard Robyn leaving the room around seven, but I stayed in bed until nine. I guess with the time change it was ten, but nonetheless I was up earlier than expected.

Getting out of bed was not something I was interested in, however. I watched some YouTube videos for a little while and then decided I would make everyone some breakfast. I had promised myself that I would cook those breakfast sausages after all.

I head downstairs to the kitchen and fired up the large electric grill. We had three pieces of thick cut bacon, three eggs, and six sausages left. I grated a potato to make hashbrowns as well. The potato went on the grill first, followed by the sausage and bacon. I premixed the eggs to make them scrambled.

With some toast in the toaster, I was all set.

It took some coaxing for the kiddo to come down to eat, but he was happy to have food ready made for him. We both finished the orange juice and slathered some pepper jelly on my toast as well. It was a nice breakfast for a lovely Saturday morning.

Today is my brother-in-law, Jon’s birthday as well as my old friend Aaron’s. I made sure to wish them both a happy birthday this morning.

One thing I have started doing is wishing family members happy birthday in a group chat. That way the people that might have forgotten get a chance to send their good wishes. It might be a sneaky way to remind people, but I think people appreciate it when others take the time to send them their birthday wishes.

After tidying the kitchen, Robyn went back to work, and I attempted to replace her laptops CMOS battery. I’d never replaced a CMOS battery before, so I watched a couple of tutorials. There weren’t any tools around at hand, so I used the small screwdriver that lives in my Swiss Army knife’s corkscrew. It was small enough to undo the laptop screws. They were very tight, but with a little application of force I got them all to budge.

While I was removing the main battery a wire popped off and I thought I was going to have solder it back on. I continued with the repair anyway. Removing the CMOS was straightforward. It unclipped from a terminal and the new one popped right in. I replaced the main battery and snaked the wires back into place. Then I noticed the wire that popped loose could be snapped back onto the board like a coat button.

I hoped and prayed that the reinstalled wire would work.

When the laptop was reassembled, I tried to start it up, but apparently the battery was dead. I brought it over to where my own laptop was charging and plugged it in. It came to life almost immediately and of course needed the time and date reset.

Hopefully, this is the last time this happens for the next while. If it does persist than there is something wrong with the main battery system. At least after today’s repair, I can see that replacing the main battery is a pretty easy repair.

I was feeling good so far. I had made a nice breakfast and fixed the wife’s laptop. The next thing on my list was to take the garbage to the dump. We wouldn’t be around to put it out and collect the bins, so the best option seemed to be to make a trip to the dump and get rid of all the garbage that could smell. We also removed took the recycling as well. My brother-in-law had sent us the directions to the local garbage drop off and prepared us that we might have to pay for the green garbage bags, but that the recycling would be free. Robyn joined me on this little outing, and we headed off into the sunny day.

This little side trip allowed us to see more of Parry Sound. The dump turned out just to be a transfer station, not the full dump, but it was all we needed. There was a good amount of people throwing things out today, but the line moved quickly. The oddest thing I saw was a mustang pulling a trailer. Seemed like an awful thing for car like that to be doing, but I guess it worked for the guy that was driving.

Now we’ll only have to worry about todays and tomorrow’s garbage which we can take home with us if necessary.

We made another stop at the Dollar Store and the Walmart to pick up a few items. One of the bathroom sinks wasn’t draining properly, so I got a small plunger to free it up. Robyn wanted a foot switch extension cord for the Christmas tree, and we found that at the Dollar Store. We’d used up the last of the napkins during our meals at the cottage, so we found some replacements as the Dollar Store as well.

And of course, we couldn’t pass the Tim Hortons without stopping and getting Robyn and the kiddo a steeped tea.

And once again, I felt like I had accomplished a few more things for the day.

Back home I did a little writing and started feeling tired. Heading upstairs, I grabbed my iPad and watched the latest episode of Dark Matter. I struggled a bit to get through it because I was feeling very tired. When it ended, I took a nap and woke up three hours later wondering where and when I was. It was one of those great naps the feels so restorative.

Robyn was downstairs reading her schoolbooks when I came down around five PM. I didn’t feel much like cooking and neither did she. We decided to eat out again. We just had to choose a place to eat. I was tempted to go back to the Trapper’s Choice, but being a Saturday, I felt it would be too busy to get a table in a timely manner.

I had a suspicion that if I didn’t decide the kiddo and Robyn would choose the Swiss Chalet which was just a few minutes down the road from the cottage. I ended up driving there even though I don’t really love their food. They do have good ribs, so I got a third rack of those and some fries. This Swiss Chalet also had a Harvey’s in it as well. It’s pretty usual to see that combination across Ontario. Usually the Swiss Chalet is a sit-down restaurant with waitresses, and the Harvey’s is your standard fast-food place. But the Parry Sound Swiss Chalet was treated the same as the Harvey’s. no waitress, plates, or cutlery. And we didn’t get the wonderful warm lemon water at the end. Not even a hand wipe.

It felt odd to see the quarter chicken dinners sitting in a cardboard tray. It made the meal look cheaper. My ribs took longer to make than their tasteless chicken dinners, so I had to wait a bit to get my meal. The ribs were good, and in my opinion, they are best thing they make at Swiss Chalet. Which is odd, because they are a chicken rotisserie restaurant. My ribs were delicious and I enjoyed them.

The kiddo had a crocheting project to do for his girlfriend. I think he wants to make her a winter hat of some kind. We left the restaurant and headed to the Dollarama across the street looking for the bits and bobs he wanted for the project.

Then it was over to the Dollar Store to see if he could find more bits and bobs and finally, we ended up at the Walmart to buy yarn and, you guessed it, more bits and bobs.

Robyn had seen the baked apple pies advertised at Swiss Chalet and asked me to take her to the McDonalds drive-thru so she could order one of their pies. Happy wife, happy life as they say. Everyone had what they wanted, so we could finally head back to the cottage.

Around that time, our doorbell camera started going off. I completely forgot it was Halloween tonight. Our outdoor lights run off a timer, so people thought we were home. We also had some pumpkins that may have led them to believe that we were participating in the holiday. Unfortunately for them, we were hundreds of kilometers north.

We arrived back at the cottage around eight PM, and we all settled down to work on our projects. I had writing to do, the kiddo had film editing and Robyn had her school readings. It had been a delightful day, and I was ready to tackle the finale day of the month and achieve my word quota challenge.

At this point in the day, I still have well over sixty-five hundred words to write, but I felt like as long as I persevered, I would make it in the end. I had the confidence that I could make the rest of the words up in three or four hours if I used dictation. But for the moment I was hand typing everything. I’d safe the dictation super weapon for later in the evening when everyone else went to bed. My job for now was to just keep typing.

Around this time, my sister sent me pictures of my niece and nephew. My nephew was wearing a headband with short blond hair. He had a very flamboyant Hawaiian style short of a cat riding a dinosaur on it. My first thought was that it was from the book series Dungeon Crawler Carl, but my sister wrote back that he was supposed to be celebrity chef Guy Fieri.

My niece was dressed like a bunny, but with blood running down her mouth. I assumed it was the character from the Bunnicula books, a bunny that is also a vampire. But I was pleasantly surprised to hear she was going as the killer bunnies from Monty Python. And as her uncle I was proud that she knew what Monty Python even was.

Our eldest dressed up with her friends in Halifax as the Teletubbies. All four of them had a costume.

I expected to get some pics from my sister and brother-in-law, but they were probably too busy to think to send them. We’ll likely get them tomorrow when they have had a chance to rest.

There hasn’t been a single trick or treater at the cottage tonight. It’s a long dark road to get here and not really worth it with only five or six properties at the end of it. We did see some older kids when we went to the Walmart and Dollar Store after dinner, but we weren’t really going through the residential areas, so not sure how big the crowds get here.

Robyn surprised me with a cup of tea and some shortbread cookies, and the cookies went incredibly well with the vanilla earl grey tea. But I didn’t get long to enjoy it. Robyn asked me to take a walk down to the dock. I transferred my tea into my heated smart mug and got my sweater and coat on.

The temperature had dropped significantly, and I was glad to have my sweater on. I pulled the zipper up as far as it would go to lock in the heat. The path to the dock goes through a small woodland and is lit above by a zigzag of string lights. It has a magical feel to it when you are out there in the dark, and the lights give of a warm yellow orange glow. The entrance to the dock was in complete darkness. We stepped onto it and we got a whiff of an odour I can only describe as poopy and maybe a bit musky. We wondered if a bear had been hanging around the beach front, but there were no bear tracks to be found in the sand. We found some deer tracks, so its possible we were smelling their skat.

Out at the end of the dock the stars looked amazing. I love when you can see the arms of the galaxy like a lighter band cutting through the sky. All the stars were so visible and bright that it made for a spectacular view.

It was a bit chilly out there in the unprotected dock, so we headed back in and trudged up the path, a constant incline. When we got to the four-car garage, I paused and did a funny dance, a few karate moves and a little shadow boxing. My brother-in-law installed a motion camera there and it has an AI filter that reports what kind of activity it thinks is going on.

Last time we were up my father-in-law was cutting down branches with a pull saw, and it told my brother-in-law that a man was walking around the property with a dangerous weapon. I was hoping to get a text with some amazing AI interpretations, but it’s my brothers-in-law birthday and he has kids who were busy trick or treating tonight.

Hopefully, my antics gave him a little joy or at least confused him a little. I’ve been doing questionable things every time I pass the camera. At least once per day.

It’s a little after ten o’clock and I still have about five thousand seven hundred words to got. Just a little past the quarter way there point. I still have a long night ahead, but I am feeling confident that I will make it to the finish line. The three-hour nap I had this afternoon is going to come in handy this evening. I’ve run out of Alani Energy drinks, so I’ll have to rely on tea and Dr. Pepper Zero’s to keep me caffeinated.

I haven’t heard how some of the US midterm elections have been going, but more and more it seems like Trump is losing his shine. I read somewhere that there are four Russian oil tankers going around in circles because although Trump authorized the purchase of Russian oil an diesel, it is still technically against the law to buy it in the USA.

So, those Russian ships have been denied the right to enter the ports where they might offload their cargo. I haven’t been able to confirm if this is true, but its sure sounds about par for the course. The talking point of Trump telling the press that the GOP doesn’t have the funds for Medicaid and childcare is because they are at war with Iran. That is a statement that is not going down well with voters at all. And it seems that J.D. Vance isn’t helping the Republicans out as well with his verbal missteps. I think these guys to used to being able to say whatever they wanted in the past and now it’s no longer getting the same positive response from their base.

And the I heard that another General has left his position leaving more egg on Pete Hegseth’s face. But what did anyone expect when they put a TV anchor in charge of the largest logistical machine in the entire country? A lot of his boisterous comments have fallen on deaf ears at the Pentagon as well. It’s pretty clear that the career military do not like Hegseth one bit. I’m sure it’s not the first time they have had to sit and wait an administration out.

And then again, last week with that press secretary claiming to be a lawyer and not even being able to give a decent press briefing was incredibly embarrassing for Trump and his cronies.

I think Elon Musk is another guy that should be getting a bit worried. His interference in the Starlink services with the Ukraine could get him charged in a Federal Court. I mean he could be in jail in the next couple of years. Seems unlikely, because the rich and powerful rarely spend a moment in prison. There might be a bit of a sham court hearing, but in the end we all know he’ll get off.

I wonder too if the Epstein files will come back into play during the elections of 2028? Trump seems to have done a good job of getting the press to worry about other things. He’s become bolder and bolder, and I wouldn’t be surprised if moving the news cycle on to something else was the reason for all his more egregious maneuvers.

But hell, that man could give your ulcers, ulscers.

There have been a few more articles and expressions of sympathy for the passing of Patrick Stewart. The one that maybe surprised me the most was from his children. It seems that Stewart was barely in their lives and that’s not, I think, how most of us would have imagined him to be. There are probably thousands of people who dreamed of having a father like him. I remember the same was said about Little House on the Prairie star Michael Landon. He was so busy working, acting and producing that his on kids barely saw him.

Funny how that seems to be the way for these icon male actors who have a fatherly presence. They can do it on screen but failed miserably in life.

Now, I don’t know the first thing about Patrick Stewarts personal life, let me be clear about that. But I do wish he had been the type of father to his kids that we all thought he was.

Well, it’s 10:40 PM and I still have about five thousand words to write before I can let my head hit the pillow. I’ll be up late again for sure.

We leave tomorrow, so I’ll have to get up a bit earlier to clean the cottage and pack everything into the car. We have to wash all the sheets and pillowcases and give ourselves enough time to let the dishwasher run. My in-laws have some friends coming up to stay at the cottage after we are gone, so we want to take extra care to make sure everything is in order before we depart.

I am still looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, but I am not looking forward to working on Monday morning. I could use another week of this R&R for sure.

The nap I took this afternoon was incredibly helpful. I feel loads better after taking that extended rest. Truth be told, I would take a nap every day if it was allowed. But our modern world is just not built for us to have that kind of life extending freedom. I think countries like Spain got it right with the whole siesta thing. Granted they work later into the evening than we do. I’d still like to give it a try one day. I am definitely a nap guy.

How could something that makes me feel so much better be bad for me? It isn’t. I think if I was a full-time writer I would take more than one nap per day. It would be my little reward for getting a scene written. I might even enjoy becoming a morning person too!

Robyn was still reading her schoolbooks at eleven. I was hoping she would finish and we could watch a show or two before she went to bed, but I think the reading is taking way longer than she’d hoped. Unfortunately, its one of those online reading apps and it doesn’t really give you a good indication of how much more is left to read. It’s like driving somewhere with out a map. The uncertainty makes it less pleasant to execute.

Robyn headed to bed around eleven fifteem, exhausted from a day of nothing but reading. I had 4300 words left to write and since the other two were upstairs, I decided it was time to go down into the basement and switch over to dictation for the rest of the night. My hands were getting a bit sore from all the typing anyway and could use the break.

I remembered to bring down something to drink to keep my mouth from and throat from drying out, and tonight it was a Dr. Pepper Zero.

I’ve shifted down to the basement at the cottage, which has become my new writing cave. I remembered to wear my slippers and grabbed my sweater this time as well as a beverage. So I should be ready to get things going using dictation.

I forgot to charge the mic mini last night and I’m hoping it last for the duration of this session. As far as I know, it can last up to 10 or 11 hours. I guess were about to find out how long this microphone can run for. The only problem is that I’m not sure it was fully charged to begin with. And it’s not like you can look it up and see how much better is left. Or maybe you can.

If there is a way, all I’m not sure what it is, unless it’s something to do with the app that comes with the iPhone. But I’m not about to get into that this evening.

Since today was our last full day, I’m looking back and thinking about if we all had the time we were hoping we are going to.

I think speaking for myself, that I had a good rest, but I didn’t write any fiction while I was here. Once again, all my writing was devoted to getting my word count for the challenge and the easiest way to do that is by writing a blog post. But above all the thing I needed the most was a break from work. The pressures of the job and the constant deadlines can really take it out of you. I do hope that my return to work will be filled with more energy as well as reduced stress because the team was working very hard to get everything in order by the time I got back.

I’m very lucky to have teammates that are so professional and diligent in the work. And even though they are moving on to another show in a few weeks time they haven’t let up the pace. This particular show has been much harder than the originals we usually work on. This has to do with the company were working for as well as the fact that we are doing all the design work instead of another client. On top of that the entirety of the show’s look was changed just before we started. This is created a great deal of problems mostly centred around the lack of time. The other team should be weeks and weeks ahead of us, but instead are only one or two weeks ahead and at the beginning of the show they weren’t able to deliver as much work as they should have. That lack fell to our team and we were forced to make up the difference.

But recently things have been getting better, as the design team and the storyboard team slowly move ahead. That gives our layout team designs and more time to work on painting.

So all in all, I’m expecting things to be in a great spot when I return on Monday. And as tonight is the last day of the month of October, Halloween night, I will have a bit more room to manoeuvre her when it comes to word count deadlines at the beginning of the month.

Once again, I’ll promise myself not to get into a deficit once again. I have to remember the secret weapon of dictation and how powerful it is when it comes to meeting word count goals. There is nothing quite as fast as talking your words onto the page.

In fact, I think I’m going to make it a policy of my own that I will use dictation for 50% of the 2000 words per day I need to write. My thought is that the blog can be anywhere from 502,000 words long and the rest should be made from fiction, most likely the mentor assignments.

One thing I would like to try during the month of November is to write some fiction using only dictation. I did experiment with this during a science fiction novella I was writing. I went back later and reread it and try to see where I had written and where I had dictated. I was unable to tell the difference between the two and I even asked my friend John if he noticed any difference when reading it. He stated that there was no difference, and he wouldn’t have known that I use dictation for parts of it unless I told him specifically.

And now that I’ve been practising dictation for several weeks now and become more fluent and confident I think I might be able to write a story using this method. There are plenty of people who do, so there’s no reason why I couldn’t do it as well. It may take a little adjustment in practice, but almost everything along my writing journey as required patience and practice.

One of the other things I’d like to try, is using dictation to read out other authors work to see how it feels to speak it aloud. I’m thinking of authors like Dean Koontz and Mick Herron to start with, followed by James Lee Burke. I’m wondering if speaking their words out loud will help me figure out my own author voice better, one of the things my mentor mentioned in the last letter was that my voice was starting to emerge. However, it is very possible for an author to have multiple voices. Often this occurs because some books have very little author voice and other books have a great deal of author voice. Someone like Stephen King always has a great deal of author voice, while someone like Dean Koontz has almost no author voice.

Anyways I think it will be a great exercise, and I don’t have to read the entire book it can be short stories are just the opening chapter of a novel. Or as my mentor does, she writes any section of the book that surprises her as a writer or as a reader.

On another note, I think the kiddo was disappointed this evening that we didn’t have another campfire. I didn’t want to get one started because everything I’m wearing would end up smelling like wood smoke. And of course, I would be left outside tending the fire after the novelty had worn off, the s’mores had been eaten and the marshmallows toasted. And then my brand-new sweater would smell like a wood fire until I got into the laundry machine back home. Not to mention that it would make my car smell smoky as well. And of course, I had plenty of writing to do this evening and I didn’t really have the time to spend making a fire. The one we had the other night when Allison was visiting was more than enough for me. As long as I get one fire in per stay, I’d be pretty happy.

I didn’t think we were going to use the wood stoves this week with the temperature dropping. But the cottage has electric heating in the baseboards as well as some wall-mounted units, and they kept the place warm enough. And if it got a little too chilly, we just put on sweaters.

It’s now midnight and I have exactly 3000 words left to make my quota for the month. Switching over to dictation has rapidly increased my word count exponentially. I am getting much faster at dictation and understanding the pace that the software can understand my words. It still gets some words wrong and often confuses certain words as commands, but overall, it does a great job. The fact that I’m able to talk and see the words come up on the screen almost instantaneously allows me to make any corrections to the text on-the-fly. Although, there are plenty of times where I am pacing around the room and not looking at the screen. My ideal set up would be to have a room that would allow me to pace around, perhaps 12’ x 12’. And on the wall or maybe all four walls there would be a large monitor with the text displayed on top. Maybe there would be a central pillar or stand where the laptop would sit, and I could make corrections from there.

I find it useful to set word count goals on a micro level whatever I’m using dictation. So, for the next hour all the way up till 1 AM I will aim for 2000 words. If I’m successful at that pace, which is 2000 words per hour I will be finished the month of September’s challenge by 130 in the morning. Keep in mind, that this is a very lofty goal, but it is very achievable as there are some authors who can write 5000 words in an hour using this method.

I can envision the day where I am writing multiple novels at 5000 words per day each. Choosing to write multiple novels at the same time because ideas often take time to permeate through the brain and having more than one project on the go would allow one not novel to permeate while the other one is being written. This was something that Isaac Asimov was known to do. He had a I of maybe 12 manuscripts, that he worked on using a typewriter and when he got to the point where he couldn’t continue on one he moved on and grab the next one below and just started on that. And then this way he was able to get a great deal of work done.

And this is a great system to use if I plan to have multiple series in different genres. Switching up genres and storylines is almost like giving your brain a break. It’s strange but true. I find the same thing happens when I stop working and play a game of chess as a form of a break. People look at me strangely and asked if chess is really how I take a break. Because to them chess is work, and they’re not wrong, the differences it’s using a different part of my brain and allowing the other things to permeate while I worked on chess problems.

There’s an awful lot of writing advice that talks about distracting your mind with mediocre tasks like washing the dishes, going for a walk or doodling to allow your brain to come up with the answers to the questions you’re having trouble with at the time. The theory is that your subconscious brain works on these problems when you shut your logical brain down by doing doodles or wondering what to have for dinner.

And I wonder if as I’m off was achieving the same thing by moving from series to series her book to book. Because he also wrote nonfiction as well as fiction and I imagine those two disciplines also allowed his brain to switch gears.

Of course, all of this could be me just talking out of my ass. Because what do I really know at this point along the journey. I am still what my teachers would call a baby writer. I don’t even know what I don’t know yet. I just know I don’t know it.

But I do feel that my year of mentorship has helped me bring many things into focus and force me to keep writing when maybe I would have chosen to rest. And the only way to learn is by doing and by studying. And of course, the third way is to have a great mentor teach you specific lessons. The funny thing about all the courses and lessons I’ve been taking is that you are supposed to learn something by becoming conscious of it and practising it, but when it comes time to do it for real, you are supposed to not think about it. The idea is that your subconscious mind now has the information and your job as the writer is to give it permission to use the tools you’ve learned. The idea that you can consciously use the tools in your toolbox will essentially lead to disaster and bad writing. And I suppose that’s true for what I do for living. Knowing colour theory and all the things that go into visual arts helps me solve problems but when you’re doing the work it’s much more intuitive. And I suppose intuition is your subconscious speaking directly to your mind. Which I know is a bit of an oxymoron because technically anything that is subconscious is not conscious.

But the brain just doesn’t seem to work that way!

It just loves to break all the rules.

I’ve heard other artists in other disciplines talk about this in different ways. But essentially, I think they are saying the same thing. The key to writing a good song, a good book or the next hit television show is all about showing up to your workspace every day, and allowing your creative mind, your subconscious mind to play. And that’s the key showing up and allowing the subconscious mind to play.

Chris Martin from Coldplay describes his method of songwriting as sitting at the piano and waiting for the song to reveal itself. What I think he’s talking about is the same thing I’ve just mentioned. He shows up at his piano and allows his subconscious mind to play, and it often feels like something appearing out of nowhere. Martin describes it as being a receiver to the radio waves of the universe. He might not have said it that way exactly, but you get the gist.

And that methodology has worked fairly well for the band.

And just going to take another moment to talk about my word count mostly for my own records. But it’s now 12:20 and I’ve got 1900 words left to right. If you remember my goal from midnight till 1 AM was to write 2000 words and be left with 1000 words to finish by 130.

So as it stands, I have 40 minutes to write 900 more words and that means I wrote 1100 words in the space of 20 minutes. I am deftly getting faster at dictation, and I think that even the Dragon software is learning by voice as well as a fitting from the better sound from the new microphone. It also helps that it’s nice and quiet downstairs in the basement of the cottage.

Anyway, I am incredibly stoked by the speed I’m getting. To write 1100 words by hand can take me an entire hour, sometimes longer. It’s definitely going to be a game changer. My only worry is that any increased speed might be interpreted as me using or adopting AI technology to do the writing. Because the software I’m using is not artificial intelligence, it’s nearly understanding my language and converting it to text. It’s only understanding or intelligence revolves around context of words that are grouped together in spelling mistakes. At no point does the software actually create the content for me it simply acting as a verbal keyboard.

I can imagine that there will be people who see others like me, who’ve adopted dictation and are putting out novel after novel, and will get jealous of my output. These sort of accusations very calm and when you’re playing first-person shooters online. Anyone who doesn’t understand why you are winning assume you are cheating and immediately accuses you of doing something wrong. Maybe that is what will be happening in the near future with writers and artists. There have already been multiple writers who had their contracts cancelled after being accused of using AI to write their books.

Looking at the spreadsheet I keep to record my word count, it comes as a great shock to see that I have written over 615,000 words this year. And of course, the year is not over. I believe the final word count if I last the entire year is somewhere around 750,000 words. That essentially could have been 10 to 15 novels. It just blows my mind.

And again, for my records it’s now 1230 and I have 1500 words left to right. That means I have ½ an hour to write another 500 words to make the micro goal I set for myself. I think I’m just blowing these goals out of the water, and I may have to make them a little harder to achieve. That’s the thing about the path I’m on; you have to keep changing your goals and parameters in order to keep challenging yourself.

I know when I used to run, the first day my legs would hurt. The second day my lungs would burn. And on the third day my body would have already adjusted. It’s amazing how quickly the body and mind adjusts to a new environment and stimulus.

And speaking of new environments, the upright position and pacing I do while dictating feels much better on my back and hips then sitting at a computer desk. I like the option of changing things up because our bodies were not meant to be in any one position for extended periods of time. And I think movement is good for the mind it helps you think clear and gets the blood flowing into your brain. And all that is very helpful when it comes to creating imaginary worlds filled with imaginary characters.

I’m envious of Kevin J Anderson who writes the new Dune books with Frank Herbert’s son Brian. Kevin is also the author of many Star Wars books as well as many series of his own. The majority of his books are over 200,000 words long and you might be surprised to learn that he writes most of them while walking up the mountain. He brings a small high-quality voice recorder on his hikes and he dictates into the microphone while he’s out on the trail.

In order to achieve that, he needs to bring with him some bullet points of the story beats he wants to hit in that chapter. All he has to do is glance at it while he’s walking and then allow his brain to come up with the words. And because he’s been doing it for so long he is able to create a great deal of work in a year. He put a book out on dictation, and was quite frank about the fact that he wanted to spend every waking moment writing and there was a lot of wasted time in a day. For example he might write the opening of a short story or novel while driving to get groceries. Where he lives the grocery stores somewhere around 20 minutes away and in that time he’s able to write possibly up to 1 to 2000 words.

I don’t think I’m at the point where I can do that. One reason is I often don’t have bullet points for the type of writing I do. I’m making up as I go. But if I can learn to do that while I am at home in theory, I should be able to write some of my stories while I’m walking around the world whether that be the mall or one of our provincial parks. Or even better on the beaches of some Mexican resort or perhaps down the Champs-Élysées in France.

So, I think it’s completely worthwhile studying authors like Anderson who can create vast amounts of work in the shortest period of time. And it’s important to mention, that the work he creates is of high quality. Some of that of course, comes from the fact that he was already a master storyteller before he started using dictation. Dictation was merely a tool that allowed him to do it more often and faster.

And of course, he’s not using software to convert his words to text. He sends the digital audio file to a dictation service that employs real humans to type out his words. This means he doesn’t have to verbalize all the punctuation and dialogue tags in quite the same way you do if you’re doing it with software. The human typist understands that when a character is saying something quotes are automatically required. And that any pause is likely a carriage return in the start of a new paragraph.

However, there are multiple new generations of authors that are using dictation and sharing their experiences via YouTube. And this sort of sharing of information is generally what moves things forward. Because I don’t think any of us would have realized that Kevin J Anderson was using dictation to write his novels unless he had specifically mentioned it.

And I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating, that dictation is an ancient method of writing down one’s thoughts. Even Masters like Leonardo da Vinci had people who would write down what he said. I can imagine that in the days of quill and ink that having someone write down your thoughts was not only a luxury but incredibly faster. These days it’s not so much of a luxury as it is just faster. Well, it’s still a luxury who we kidding. It’s just a luxury that is available to just about everyone. Most cell phones and computers are now offering some sort of dictation or voice command already built in. Most of it is not particularly good for writing stories. A lot of it is built for recording meetings. But there are multiple apps designed for the writer available on iOS.

How I would love to spend time here at the cottage in the summer next year and walk around with my microphone transmitter attached to my voice recorder and create stories that people would want to read. If I can get that point I don’t think it would feel like work. I have visions of lying on the beach, under a large umbrella, because I burn like crispy bacon in the sun, and talking to myself while I record it.

My writing teacher did the math on how many words per day indeed to write in order to have one novel per year. The number comes down to a ridiculously low amount. If you write 250 words per day at the end of the year you have more than enough for an entire novel. That means writing for less than 15 minutes by hand, half an hour at the most. And if you’re using dictation, you could probably do that in the space of five minutes or less. That’s just absolutely mind blowing. And of course, if you increase that number to 500 words per day, half an hour per day you will have to novels at the end of the year.

So, I don’t imagine it’s too hard to guess where I’m going with this. I plan to write as many novels per year as I’m able. Learning how to tell a good story is part of it, and perhaps the biggest part but as I continue my journey, I am also learning how to do it faster and more often with less effort. And that generally means you need a system and this system seems to be working.

I have six minutes left until 1 o’clock. And I have 325 words left to meet the minimum quota for the word challenge for September. Now I’m going to see if I can write 325 words in the space of five minutes. Why not?

Why can’t I use this blog is a test and a challenge to help me increase my writing ability. It’s kind of fun knowing that 325 words in five minutes is actually a possibility. This is not something I would house ever believes could be done this time last year. And even though I was aware of dictations advantages, all the times I tried it I never achieved the type of numbers that other people were claiming to have.

But lately I’m starting to achieve the type of numbers that got me into this in the first place. I’m not close to writing 5000 words per hour at the moment, but I’m starting to believe that that is actually possible. But even getting 2 to 3000 words per hour is still pretty amazing. And as I become a writer, and transition over to full-time writing there is the worry that he can become overly isolating both from friends and family. So if I’m able to spend less time at the keyboard and still achieve all my goals as well as have time for family and friends, well that sounds like a great life to me.

I’ve got two minutes left on the clock in 86 words left to right. Even if I fail I’m still impressed with the amount of words I was able to write so quickly in five minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever challenge myself to talk this quickly and to achieve this sort of word count. It’s just something I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do before now, and that’s huge!

And that’s the whole point of taking courses, having a writing mentor and taking on challenges like this 2026 words per day for the entire year of 2026. I’m learning things I wouldn’t have even imagined because they were not things I thought about until I was in the thick of it.

And it’s 12:59 AM and I have made my word count. I things incredible I was able to write over 325 words in less than five minutes. My mind is absolutely blown.

My body is jubilant that I can go to bed now.

Until tomorrow, my friends.

Happy Halloween.