Four Year Old: “Why do I have to scrap my plate in the garbage can?”

Me:

If we don’t scrap our plates and we leave them on the counter mice will come up from our basement and eat the food off the plates.  Then they will think that this is a good place to live and have babies.  However, there will not be enough food for them and their babies – so they will sneak into our rooms at night a nibble on us.  Soon they will get so desperate that they will saw open our heads and eat our brains.  This grey matter will give them super intelligence and they will master rocket science and weapons.  From there they can launch surface to surface missiles destroying our neighbors and adding them to their food supply.  They then will have more super intelligent babies and those children will march upon our town, our state and our nation.  That is why we need to scrape our plates.

Four year old in an exasperated voice: “Ooooookkk”

I’ve been interested in using speech recognition for writing the first draft of a chapter for a while. I thought this would allow me to focus on the image in my mind of the scene and not on the words as they appear on the screen. I could write a first draft faster and be more stream of conscience. Faster is better but I’m not sure if stream of consciousness is better. I can write about 1000 per hour if I know where I want to go in a scene. This hour is usually at 5 am so I’m barely awake. That could also add to stream of conscience.

I’ve heard authors say they can dictate a novel in two weeks. That’s grand for them but I haven’t read one of those two week novels and enjoyed it. It was more a chore to read. So I’m not trying to pump out quantity just to reach the end. I could write badly using a keyboard – no need to investigate new ways of doing that.

So I want to try speech recognition for the first draft only. I fully expect to revise and edit without speech recognition.

Microsoft Windows 7 Speech Recognition

I started by looking for YouTube videos of the free product installed with my operating system. This turned out to be funny and depressing at the same time. Several videos were created as tutorials of the product but only thirty seconds into the video, there were plenty of potty words because the software wasn’t dictating the speech correctly.  However, it was enough information for me to feel it was worth a try.

I found the software on my own computer and went through the tutorial. The tutorial taught me how to start the speech recognition software, how to use it, and then gave me a few exercises to try on my own. I finished the tutorial then I tried to read a Curious George book into Microsoft Word 2007 at regular speed to see how the dictation would go. The hardest thing for the software to get right was a period at the end of a sentence. I must say that word in some Northwest-by-way-of-Texas accent that the software doesn’t know how to interpret.

I also have terrible use of the marks of grammar due to my programming background. The dictation software expects me to say “exclamation point” when I naturally say “bang.” So I have to change my natural speech to get this to work. This is annoying but really my own fault and nothing to do with the speech recognition software.

The software worked best when I spoke a few words or short phrase then waited till the dictation appeared on screen. Longer sentences didn’t work in that the software just stopped dictating. I would have to start up again by repeating what I had already said. In terms of natural speech speed, I wasn’t impressed.

However, for a free product for a person that doesn’t mind slowing down — it would work very well. The tutorial covered how to navigate between programs, navigate a web page, and a few other need-to-know processes I had not thought about.

What Caught My Eye

The software works across your entire computer, meaning drop down menus, tool bars, buttons etc. The thing I liked and didn’t expect was that you can say “show numbers” and an outline of items shows up with numbers right over what was there. So if you don’t know how to say make this text olive green, you can select the text (easy enough), and then navigate to the color by numbers. It was impressive. When software impresses me – well, I’m happy.

The Headphones

I have heard the headphones are important for success with the dictation. I used by husband’s set which has a rotating mic on the headset. The one thing I noticed was that I wear glasses and the headset was very tight. If I keep looking for dictation software, the right headset will be very important.

Summary

So I don’t think this software will work for dictating a first draft of a chapter however it would work for correcting a work because that is a much slower process for me. It would also work for short emails or web browsing.

Video on engadget page here.

Just days ago, he announced a blog he started to write about his journey from one life to another, from one place to another. I expect this blog to be amazing because I’ve had a year of amazing stories from Jeremy. But I don’t want to keep him a secret. I want you to know. Here is his blog.

So my daughter and I are sitting at the kitchen table playing Uno, a card game. She can’t decide which card to play and she uses my most often-used four letter word. She says it under her breath and slurs it. Imagine a funky accent from Australia and you get the idea. My mind doesn’t grasp what monumental moment just occurred. My attention-starved daughter was probably disappointed I didn’t congratulate her on her once-again in-context correct word usage. So she says it again, louder, without the funky accent. I heard it this time as if it were yelled in my ears at top volume. But I’m calm, since I’ve had parenting classes.

I ask her to repeat the word. She does, happy now to be recognized. There is no point asking her where she heard it. I inform her she isn’t allowed to use this particular word. She frowns and asks why. I let her know the school will call me and I’ll have to pick her up and won’t she miss her friends, all over saying the wrong word. So I brainstorm with her for inoffensive words to use in its place: shoot, darn, drat. You get the idea.

My husband comes home after work and he and I discuss other possible words we could suggest that wouldn’t get her sent home from school. He decides “dog licker” is an acceptable term to use for frustration or anger in the moment, without being offensive. I must say, I disagreed. However, it wasn’t covered in class so what do you think? Acceptable or no?

I sat down and only knew one other person – Fred Su, the speaker. I caught up with the ladies and then we mingled with the other members of the table. Fred introduced his writing instructor and two of the critique class students. The teacher was completely white haired and she mentioned the class was held at the BTC before it was called the BTC.

This is normal in Bellingham to refer to a place by its name as you knew it from way back when. I know lots of place by their original names around town even though I arrived long after they were something else entirely. Want to know where the old Sears building was downtown? I could tell you even though its been out at the mall since before I arrived. That’s Bellingham.

The other two students were probably closer to Fred’s age, in sight of retirement if not already there. They mentioned they were in the critique class together for more than five years. That’s dedication.

The only other person at the table sat to my left by the name of Carl S. He said he had been a member for six years but I couldn’t remember him. Oops.

On my right, sat Kathy S., one of my happy friends. She writes dark fairy tales but she’s effusively happy. Doesn’t sound like it would mix but it does.

So Carl, by way of introduction, says he and Fred were in the service together during the war. Kathy said something like “oh, Vietnam.” Carl so “no.” Fred said he was stateside during the war. Carl is thin, tall, and a retired teacher of Creative Writing. I asked him what he wrote. He successfully evaded that with a smiling laugh and something about not having time to write since he spent 30 years editing papers from teenagers. Poor guy.

Some how the table’s conversation switched to the “man language” the teacher would have to say as she read each student’s work in the class at BTC. The other two women students gushed about how their proper teacher said these “man words” and the teacher nodded to Fred and Carl about how they knew those kinds of words since they were in the service.

“Man words?” I asked.

Oh, they blushed some more even thinking about it. How could they possibly explain? Finally the teacher piped up and said if the student had profanity in their writing, she was going to read it just as it was on the page. No mental editing while speaking.

Oh, so profane words: cussing, swearing – those were man words? I didn’t know.

What’s so wrong with telling the story in forward-moving chronology? To me, it’s one more way I won’t loose the reader. Or as the reader, I won’t be lost.

Oh yeah, I understand showing backstory in flashback is a show, instead of tell, but aren’t there other ways? Better ways?

I finished Empire Falls recently. Good book, except for one chapter. It presented all flashback scenes with italics text. That gets annoying after one sentence but I didn’t have to guess what was going on the next time I saw it.

Empire Falls is a three generation story where a chunk of history isn’t known to the present day main character. So the backstory-flashback-italics scenes reveal the mystery one section at a time. Since the characters involved were dead except for one, you couldn’t use dialogue as a device. And letters are so boring. So it came down to the main character’s memory refreshed by an old newspaper clipping . The flashback put context around it to give us reasons and emotions involved.

But somehow even that feels like a cheat. So what devices can be used to illuminate backstory other than flashback?

I would love to know what works for you. Maybe you like to read flashback. Let me know.

I selected text in OneNote on a page, then right-clicked and chose “Blog This.” Microsoft Word opened up and asked me to register a Blog Provider. Once connected successfully, I am able to write the blog in word.

Here is the link on Microsoft’s website about blogging with Word.

Below is a sample chart made by Word’s [Insert -> Chart], which opened Excel where I could modify the sample chart data and text.

I have the same comments every time about one of the ladies in the group.  She doesn’t have much conflict. I read 24 pages tonight for this month’s critique group. I circled the page number of any page I found conflict on: just one – page 11.

I wondered why this lady doesn’t have any conflict in her scenes. I can think of two reasons: either she subconsciously ignores it or she doesn’t think it is required. So I wondered if conflict (as in Goal, Motivation, Conflict) is on the major scene checklists I could find on the Internet. Go ahead and search google for scene checklist.

Each of these checklists says tension or some other word but not conflict. It’s almost as if writers (even of checklists) don’t want to use that word: conflict.

I’ve been there myself. I’m writing a scene and I quickly and easily slip by the conflict because I don’t like conflict. This however makes a scene boring. You might say your scene doesn’t need conflict because your writing a literary story. I just finished Empire Falls and was blown away with how much conflict was on every page. Every page.

So I’m going to write my own scene checklist of one item:

Conflict

Without conflict, there is no point for the scene to be in the story. The goal and motivation of the characters of the scene are necessary ingredients to develop the conflict so don’t leave those out. A fight in a bar nearby when the librarian just wants to cross the street is not the type of conflict the scene needs unless the fight is keeping her from achieving her goal of crossing the street so she can rescue the book from the gutter before it is ruined.

Prior to class I saw a friend, Susan Colleen Browne, teaching a class across the hall. I stepped over to say hi and she said how much she enjoyed Laura so now I felt really excited for the class and ashamed of my laziness.

Luara knew several people in the class and most of us had a fiction work in progress. While the rest of the class introduced themselves, I looked her up on my blackberry. Ignorance was not bliss. Who the heck was she? A prof at the local University besides a published novelist many times over.

She used The Great Gatsby mostly as the example to pull from in the lecture part of the class. She had three hand outs which she read from verbatim so I didn’t have much need to take notes. Two books she mentioned were Word Menu by Random House and Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. I immediately went to PaperbackSwap and requested them.

She explained she used the Word Menu book to get related words in a subject area to help with word choice in her novels. The example she used was a ship and how you could find words related to ships easily. I could see how that would help with both theme and specifics.

She explained that the original title of The Great Gatsby had been Trimalchio and that she used Brewer’s to look up it’s meaning. She also mentioned Brewer’s was just a fun book to read.

A couple of areas that she discussed I hadn’t heard before were: bridges and narrative sludge. Bridges are any bit of writing at the beginning of a chapter or scene that you write just to get into it. At the time you probably need it to get to the writing itself instead of facing a blank page but once the material is on the page, you can go ahead and edit the bridge. Narrative sludge can be anything that doesn’t serve the narrative such as: insignificant repetition, too realistic dialog, every element of a scene regardless of how meaningless.

One thing she kept coming back to that stuck with me was Narrative Space. The idea was that you shouldn’t waste your narrative space but to examine every word to see if it deserved space in your work. I could almost see a plot of land, a small plot. What deserved to grow there?

It was a great class.