Hooked on the Dragon

I bet someone has! There are plenty of writers who dictate their stories. Kevin J. Anderson, prolific writer and WOTF judge, dictates his (though not with dragon). And I believe our own Martin Shoemaker dictates his, but maybe not with Dragon? I think he records himself and then transcribes later.

Whatever works for you. Get the words on paper (or the screen).

Thank you for the info KD. It's a relief to know dictation devices are allowed. I still plan to learn to type better than I do at this time.

Several published writers I know dictate into a digital recorder and hire a transcriptionist to do the typescript. $ or more per page Standard Manuscript Format. I used the dragon during a time of temporary bilateral handicap. Surgery partially fixed the handicap. Before that, my typewriter rate was sixty-five words per minute, ten per minute stab-and-peck for about a decade, up to thirty words per minute now. No hope of ever much better, let alone the one hundred twenty-five to one hundred fifty per minute or so of average speech. Peculiar that the average speech rate is also about the same as the average reading rate.

Be aware some venues and more than a few individuals forbid recording during lectures, speeches, classes, and such, due to copyright infringement concerns. A lecturer's material is the lecturer's intellectual property; unlicensed or unapproved dissemination is publication and infringement, even derivative formats like speech reduced to typescript, especially audio-video recordings recorded and published without consent, what with this is the FoolTube age and all.

I can't imagine why it would matter how the words got on the page in its original manuscript. I would have guessed the reader would never know in the end and so it wouldn't matter. As long as you have given the text its hard core edit the result should be the same. Is there something about the act of interacting with the keys that slows the brain and improves the word flow maybe?

Google lists the following authors as persons known to fly the dragon on occasion (or other dictation methods):

Dan Brown
Elizabeth Craig
Stephen King
Kevin J. Anderson
Barbara Cartland
Henry James

[This is all casual internet stuff, there's no real knowledge or fact checking going on here...]

Does the Dragon have some 'tick' you have to be wary of? I tried it years ago, maybe decades, when the tech was in its infancy and I couldn't really get it to work. I bet its much more impressive today.

I use Dragon Dictation on my morning and evening commutes to and from the office. I like it, although sometimes I have to scratch my head deciphering what the app hears me saying. I don't, however, use it when I write at the library or other public spaces where other people are trying to concentrate. I also don't use it at the coffee shop or at a restaurant because 1) it often picks up ambient speech and scrambles my dictation, and 2) it's just kind of bad manners -- like those people you sometimes cross who don't understand not everyone wants to hear their phone conversations.

I can't say whether any contest winner has ever used a dictation app at the LA function; I've never had the privilege of winning this contest (yet?) to find out for myself. Perhaps you mean specifically for the 24-hour story? I don't imagine you could get away with dictating while the workshops were going on, or even inside your room while your room mate was trying to work, unless of course you paid extra for a private room. But I'm sure you could escape to more conducive parts of the hotel to get some dictation time in.

~Morgan

I can't say whether any contest winner has ever used a dictation app at the LA function;

This is what I was wondering about. Should I make it to the LA function I'm sure my typing skills need to be better than they are now.

When using dragon I must speak clearly with rhythm. My personal record for one day is 5,000+ words. After that it's the editing grind.

Thanks for the input fellow forumites.

Write on.

A general college requirement is twenty-five words minimum per minute typewriter proficiency rate, otherwise, remedial typewriter courses until at least that proficient. X Generation era high schools required typewriter courses, electives for Boomer Generation, all but mandated for most of the Millennial Generation. Colleges and schools anymore use computer typewriter apps for those and advanced courses. Freeware apps available online, too, and all will -- with practice and persistence -- improve proficiency. A few months of daily practice should see a sixty or so words per minute typewriter rate, par for casual purposes. Eighty-plus for professional vocations.

I'm gonna check out this Dragon thing. I'm a decent typist (if I may say so myself), but I write a lot of my fiction longhand because I get distracted on a screen. Instead of typing out hundreds of pages, it'll probably be easier on my wrists if I just read them.

So I made the transition from using an audio typing program to qwerty typing. I did okay for a while and I've stayed faithful to the exercise.
Then I started doing nanowrimo this month and the daily wordcount suffered.
I retrained my dragon this morning and it's unbelievable how much faster I write. I'll still use qwerty for editing but in my need for speed I know which one I'm most comfortable with.

I've never used a Dragon so I can't comment.

In 1965, I took TYPING as I wished to learn the art. It was winter, I came down with bronchitis, missed Junior High for six weeks. My dad rented a portable typewriter, my mother brought home the textbook for TYPING CLASS. I refused to give up although my teacher thought I was finished with her class. I practiced, practiced. Pushed myself faster. If the class was at 40 wpm, I pushed 50 at home. When I came back six weeks later, my teacher clocked me at 95 words per minute on a brand new IBM Selectric 1.

When the computer keyboards came out, I immediately realized they're not as sleek as the IBMs, but you have an enormous benefit – COPY AND PASTE and DELETE AND MOVE whole paragraphs. You didn't have to stick the white-out ribbon underneath the keys, you could shift prose, nor do you have to worry about that little metal ball inside the IBM.

I wonder how Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and those early TV teleplay writers would have fared with computer keyboards, and the capability to use laser printers instead of mimeograph machines.

You didn't have to stick the white-out ribbon underneath the keys, you could shift prose, nor do you have to worry about that little metal ball inside the IBM.

My father kept an IBM Selectric in his office for envelopes and forms long past the arrival of computers. I was completely fascinated by that little ball and I mangled more than my share of white-out ribbons making "artwork" one summer.

IBM Selectric typewriters were the best! It was so much fun to change the font by switching the balls.

I think that if someone has a handicap or disability of some kind, they have to be allowed - by law - to use the Dragon for an accommodation.