Thursday, July 04, 2019

Painting without a brush

Happy Fourth of July!

I've always been interested in looking at how things are created. This happens in the kitchen. If you cook a good meal for me, I'm going to ask how you made it. If you've got me on the edge of my seat as I read your book, I'm going to look at how you wrote it. This is just how I'm wired.

So, by nature, I'm very interested in how I write. I'm also very interested in being as efficient as I can be. This speaks to a theme that has probably emerged in several posts I’ve written recently. I’ve discussed outlining as a more expedient method, and considering I'm a guy that writes 400 pages to get a 300-page manuscript, this makes sense.

In my life as an educator, for the past several years, I have experimented with speech-to-text Google apps. I have discovered that these tools help me to give my students more detailed feedback faster. I like to leave long –– sometimes page-long –– comments on students’ papers. This led me to experiment with voice comments at first. Then I realized speech-to-text apps offer the best of both worlds –– I can speak my comments and students could receive a print version which they would (hopefully) refer to when they wrote subsequent drafts.

It's probably a logical progression but one I had not thought of until very recently: use speech to text in my fiction writing. I’m an edit-as-you-go-writer. I talk myself into believing that a chapter is “finished” before I move on to the next. I'm using Speech Recognition SoundWriter to write this post. It allows me to put the clay on the wheel quickly. My goal this summer is to write a chapter a day, ala Robert B. Parker, who is said to have written five pages a day. I begin the next day by editing the previous day's work. This has been working well. After writing about 35 pages in a month, I’ve written close to 70 in the last two-and-a-half weeks. The prose seems more sparse, which I'm pleased with.

Of course, speed does not matter if the book is not a good one. I'm well aware of that. So once it is done I will send the manuscript to the usual cast of advanced readers, not tell them of the change in process, and see what they say.

When I began writing fiction, I would save manuscripts to floppy disks, back them up on floppy disks and leave a copy in the trunk of my car, one in my office, and one at my friend's house. (You only had to lose or erase one story to never make that mistake again.) The days of Google were somewhere far in the distance. When I worked as a newspaper reporter, I used pen and paper and tiny recorders. Now, my students use phone apps that not only capture what is said but preloads the quotes into a Google document for them.

I know some people believe writing longhand produces better prose than typing. But, in contrast to typing, speaking my story aloud and hearing it as a means of “writing” seems to be working well. I've always been an auditory learner. I'm dyslexic. Maybe this has something to do with it. However, as technology improves, I think it's good (at the very least interesting) to look at how we create.

I’d love to hear what others think about all of this.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great idea to use Speech to Text. I'm always trying to find time to write - and practice writing. This could help. This in itself I already realize may take practice too, but over time should same time. Thanks Barbara!