Hello Again

It is the 17th of December and I’m only now getting back to you.  I am an insensitive brute, a lowlife, a monster!  Feel free to add any thing you can think of to that list.  I deserve all of it.

The last time I posted was early November and I had just started Na No Wri Mo.  You will be happy to know that I won!  Actually, it’s more likely that you really don’t care.  That’s alright.  I didn’t expect you too, but it was important to me.

Now I had 50,091 words for a novel Titled Molly and the Demon Contractor.  I would probably need another 70,000 or so to complete the first draft.

Now, on with the topic for todays rant.

I used the speech to text program that comes with Windows 7 for the last 14 pages because I was in a panic about not being able to finish.  It sounded like a great idea.  I’m mean I can talk a whole heck of a lot faster than I can type.  Of course, I never could manage more than 27 words a minute.  I’ve gotten worse over time.  Yeah; that’s hard to believe, but true.  I have given up trying to type on my lap top.  Every time I do, the cursor starts a wild dance all over the page.  At times it disappeared altogether.  That’s only one of the reasons that I use a Wacom tablet to type.  Another neat thing about Windows 7 is the nifty little keyboard that pops up when you use a tablet instead of a mouse.

Anyway,  as I’ve said, speech to text sounded like a great idea.  Well; not so much.  It has become clear to me that my diction, that I had believed to be understandable, isn’t.  That is the only explanation for finding phrases like “how had your bloody hands for this!  Do you think you can preach the best way I’ll happen before the”  What?  I’m pretty sure that I intended, “Do you think you can” but I’ve got no idea what the rest of it should be.  The last time I tried the program I found that “Dan Rather bought tulips from the war being cold”.  No, I wasn’t even thinking about Dan Rather.  Or tulips for that matter.

I have read that Dragon speaking Naturally is a much better choice, probably written by the good people from Dragon.  A real live human told me the same thing.  But I’m not sure I can trust that particular real live human.  It would be useful about now because I’ve done something to my right shoulder and my hand keeps going to sleep.  If I sit with my head on my left shoulder it’s not as bad, but it does create problems for my neck.  I have to stop every 3 or 4 minutes to make adjustments.

Back to those 50,091 words; it’s now more like 45,300 and I’m finding more that I have to dump.  It doesn’t bother me much, and it should.  I think.  I keep writing myself into a corner. 

I think I’ll just dump the whole thing and start over.  How much worse could it get?

Stop laughing!