For the love of dictation: my time for words

Have you tried dictating your daily words? You totally should!! Even if you don’t fancy yourself a writer. Try journaling this way! I love it.

Get those words out!

I've been writing my daily words by dictation for months. There are days few and far between (mostly in July) when I'm actually seated an actual computer with time to actually put down new words on my own work-in-progress. But for the most part, I dictate in my car on the way to and from my full-time job. I'm dictating now. It felt strange at first, but it works well for me when I don’t feel like I have time anywhere.

I was telling some of my students the other day that I dictated while I drove. We were talking specifically about a project in one of our mountain communities, and the drive to get there is about 3 1/2 hours. When I go up by myself, I can dictate and still sing along to a good bit of music (I should have been a rock star), and get in 3,000 to 4,000 words for the day.

It's wonderful. The trips take a whole day, but I love them.

I also self-edit less when dictating. If I'm driving, I have to keep talking without backspacing or second-guessing myself. I mean, don’t get me wrong - I regularly roll my eyes at words that escape my lips, knowing that it sounds ridiculous - - but I can’t erase it right now and start over. I may completely restate the sentence, but often, I power through knowing the first draft is just getting it down.

My car is also the only time I have on a regular basis that I’m not doing something else. I have a full-time job that regularly extends beyond the phantom 40 hour work week. I have two small children, a husband, a house to (try to) take care of, a mother that lives with us that helps tremendously (thank sweet sassy), and all the other things like track out camp's, doctors’ appointments, soccer and baseball, keeping in touch with friends for heaven sake, upcoming vacations, and family visits. There's a lot in our mom brains. I think the analogy of having no less than ninety-six tabs open and my head at any given time is perfect.

In the last month or so I've made pretty good progress dictating on a prequel that I want to release before the first full book of my Hawthorne Valley series in the making. I need to compile them all, but I believe that I'm down to a few last scenes. So when I got in my car this morning, I plugged in my phone, pulled up my dictation app, noted the date, and got ready to roll.

Over the months I’ve found that I'm all or nothing. If I take a break, and listen to my playlist in the car instead of getting words down, that will snowball into the next day. And then I’ll have to put two days of zeros on my word count spreadsheet. I've done it before, and then it comes dangerously close to rolling me into some writing pit. It’s harder to get started when I’ve stopped, for even a few days.

And I really don't like the zeros.

So I try to get at least 500 words down every weekday and am really happy if I hit 1,000 or 1,200. Instead of draining me, like many other tasks, this energizes me and I feel like I'm working toward something for me every morning. Some people start with daily affirmations, or a morning coffee, or quiet time with the paper. I start with my characters, their adventures and their quirks. I start with dictation.

It’s great to start the day talking with your friends!

PS. I dictated this whole thing in fifteen minutes on the way to work. My word count hit 1,050 this morning alone, and that's good! If I can cover a few more of Gran and Dayah’s adventures this afternoon, I've had a pretty spectacular writing day!

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Do you ever write by dictation? I'd love to compare notes! I've got more coming, including freebies and fun giveaways, so sign up for my mailing list here. Thanks for visiting. I hope you come back!