Joshua Pearson - October 31, 2019Today, your hosts continue their discussion on productivity, publishing more books without losing quality, pantsing versus outlining, and dictating to increase the words you produce per hour. Here’s their show notes for the episode:
Pantsing vs Outlining
- Knowing what direction you are taking a scene makes the writing more efficient
- Outlining helps you remember backstory/events for future books in the series
- Use the depth of outlining that works for YOU. Different people require different levels of notes.
- Know your pitfalls and plan to avoid them so characters grow and endings are satisfying.
Editing styles
- Cycling – Writing on day 1, editing on day 2, writing on day 3, editing on day 4…)
- Potential pitfalls include never moving past the first chapter, and the need to shift things to adjust for changes between the outline and the final story.
- Non-stop (Write entire thing, edit entire thing)
- Potential pitfalls include forgetting what happened earlier and what you intended to do.
- Balance (Review a few paragraphs to get you back into the story and make quick notes about outline changes that will help you with later revisions.)
Writing Aid to Maintain Flow
- Dictation (away from a computer)
- Focus on the story – not facts. Use placeholders and add the specific details later.
- Get a dictation program that can learn YOUR voice
- Practice until it comes naturally. (Expect a learning curve)
Dictating Pros
- Talking is faster than writing
- No eye/wrist strain (from the computer)
- Portable
- Can be more active
- Less intrusive to family life
- Describing scenes as they come to life is FUN!
Dictating Cons
- Voice Strain (keep to 20-30 minute speaking sessions)
- Transcription mistakes (Hire someone to clean it up for you?)
- Mental block (Not used to it)
Non-traditional thoughts related to writing productivity
- Stay healthy!
- Movement increases productivity
- If you’re a chewer, transition to sugar-free stuff or a different physical act
- Take breaks, exercise
- Think about eye health (focus on things near to you and far away during breaks)
- See the sun!
- Comfortable writing space (chairs, treadmill desks, egronomic keyboards)
- Setting limits on your work time (Pomador Technique)
- If you have chronic problems, then find the cause and do what you can to fix it (diet, exercise, pills, doctor)
Thank you for listening, and we hope you enjoyed the show. We’d like to thank Joshua Pearson for helping us produce the show and Stephanie Neilan for putting the show notes together. Please hop on over to iTunes to leave a review. To leave a comment or ask a question for a future show visit 6figureauthors.com. We’d love to hear from you!
Recommended Tools/Resources
Dictation
- Dragon Naturally Speaking Version 13 or better – Professional or Premium.
- Sony SONY ICD PX333 Digital Voice Recorder.
- Sony ECMCS3 Clip style Omnidirectional Stereo Microphone.
- Support/reference group: Dragon Riders—Authors Dictating Facebook group.
Work Furniture
- Herman Miller Aeron chair
- Mesh Chair
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Thanks for the episode. Worthwhile, as usual. I enjoyed it this morning, while drinking my morning coffee and looking out my desk window for the squirrels.
Since you asked (in the podcast) for comments, I’ll share how I’ve handled dictation when I’ve done it.
I have a Mac (yes, Andrea, it’s worth it for Vellum alone 😉 ), so I have Dragon for Mac 5 (wish I had 6—the last Mac version available). It’s good, but I don’t like saying the quotation marks and other punctuation when I dictate. I tend to handle the dictation/transcribing process without the software.
Here’s what I do, and it has an important advantage (for me).
I use dictate into my handheld Roland R-05 audio recorder (while hiking, laying in bed, or sitting in the car waiting on my kids to get out of school). As is common, I get many more words out per hour than I do typing (and I type quite fast). Later, I listen to the recording and type it out myself, using the opportunity to give the story a first revision pass. I do small edits as I type, and am able to keep up with the recording for the most part when I do this.
So, I get the speed advantage or dictating, but lose some of that gain because I type it out myself. Net-Net, I still come out ahead on words/hour, and I get the first edit pass done in the process. Dictating gives me an alternate way to write in different scenarios and, here’s a big point for me, it gives me a run-around to overcome my distaste of sitting in a chair too long.
I still do most of my writing on the keyboard (first time around), but dictating is a useful adjunct.
Keep the podcast episodes coming. I hope/plan to see you all at NINC next year.
Cheers,
Scot
Thanks for stopping in to leave your thoughts on (Mac!) dictation, Scot!
Vellum is pretty awesome. 🙂 My assistant has it, so I just have her do my paperbacks. Jutoh is still faster for eBooks, so I only handed those off to her for a brief period. Vellum is fantastic for the standard novel/short story/novella. When I need something more tailored or powerful, I use InDesign. But that takes quite a bit more time. 🙂 I’m hoping they’ll give more options with Vellum soon. I’d prefer to hand off all of my typesetting to Adriel.
For formatting paperbacks Affinity Publisher is as powerful as InDesign, but for a one time cost of $50.
I’m going to check out Jutoh as I’ve been using Scribe, which is powerful but labor intensive.
I just found the podcast and I love it! Still debating on whether or not to get into dictation. I would love to be able to dictate in the car but dragon is so expensive and it’s the kind of thing I really want to try out before I invest that much money.
Thanks for listening, Val!
The background noise in the car/on the road might make it challenging. Maybe someone else will come by who’s tried it and can chime in.
I haven’t had problems dictating in the car – Dragon ignores the background noise. I’m not sure how. I have a friend who dictates into her iPhone while driving her kids around. That would also work.
As for cost, Dragon does (or used to do) discounts regularly. I bought mine for $99. I agree, the regular price is pretty steep if you aren’t sure if you’ll be using it often enough.
I’m glad another author recommended your podcast. I started dictating when wrist, arm, shoulder pain was too much. I took to dictation in about 2 hours so I think I’m a rare duck.
The problem now is that I started dictating doing contemporary romance and knocked out 5k words an hour but now that I’m dictating historical Regency romance I’m doing 3k words an hour at best. How can I get those big word counts that Andrea gets? What tips or tricks does she have?
It sounds like Regency romance is more dense than contemporary – having to get the words right and the dialogue down correctly. You could focus on having it be more modern, just to get the words out, and then tailoring it to Regency in revision. The extra 2,000 words/hour might be worth the extra work on the back end.
How I get to those bigger word counts: I tell myself to just say things. Sometimes I find myself thinking too hard. And I can’t ever tell later when I struggled to find my words or when I just spit them out. Having a clear idea of where I’m going helps – so, my outline. I’ve also found that pacing (any movement) will keep me better on task. I also keep little, quiet hand toys around to play with while dictating. That helps a lot to keep my mind focused.
Another excellent episode from my favourite new podcast.
It was lovely to hear a discussion of how outlining works for you while also acknowledging that discovery writing works for others. I’m a pantser, but I never start a new series without having spent a long time thinking about the arc and especially book one (usually on long dog walks). Once book 1 is done, I know that book 2 starts where book 1 ended and I have a fair idea of where it’s going to end. Other than that, I let the story tell itself (which sounds pretentious, but it’s really just putting interesting characters together and messing up their lives).
I’ve been at this a few years now, and am happy to experiment, but I find outlining tough so I confine it to when I’m working on a new series with a co-author. I never get involved in debates about which is best except to say that we each have a unique creative brain and so we need to find the production method that works best for that mind. Each to their own.
Thanks for everything. I love how practical the podcast is – that’s really what I’m looking for.
I’d be interested in hearing about how your editing process has changed as you’ve become more experienced in a future podcast.
Long dog walks are the best for brainstorming. 🙂 I pantsed my way through most of my first series. I found it was easier then to remember things and keep things in my head. I didn’t even have a story bible. I think with as many series as I’ve written now, I just have to write everything down so I can keep track. I still pants the one-off story now and then.
My outlines have become fairly sparse, the more I’ve written. I really struggled writing without one, though, in the beginning. I’ve found it really interesting to talk with authors and find out what their process is. And I agree – debates on the topic don’t actually do much. 😀 Most people use a mix of the two. One of my author friends can’t write a book at all if she knows how it’ll end. It ruins the discovery process for her, making the book not fun to write. 🙂
This is another great episode from my new favorite writing/publishing podcast. Productivity is something I’ve struggled with after beginning to self-publish. It’s all too easy for me to slip into marketing or publishing mode, and put off that day’s writing.
So, the advice to do the writing first very much resonates with me. I’ve found that when I turn off the internet, and write first, I’m far more productive. I’m fortunate that I’ll be able to retire from my day job next month and go full-time as a writer, and these productivity tips will come in handy, including the ones on dictation.
One thing I’ve found is that putting down the words first thing helps break the ice for that day, but, after a break from writing, it may take a while to build the habit back up.
Thanks again for the episode!
Heya, Dale! Yes, I find it harder to get rolling again after a break. I’m a big fan of writing every day (inasmuch as it’s possible) while working on a first draft. My brain is small, and this makes it easier to keep everything in it. 😀
Congratulations on quitting your day job! How exciting. 🙂 You’ll have to let us know how things go. My husband is planning on quitting in May, and I’m super interested in how other people handle the whole process.
Great podcast! Glad you’ve started it, the three of you have a lot to offer.
I switched to dictating my first drafts last year and it doubled my daily output. I use Dragon Anywhere – the dragon app for the iPhone. It has a dictionary feature that lets you add complex names and words (although it might mishear falchion on occasion.) It also transcribes in real time and synchronizes to Evernote so that when I’m done dictating, I drop the newly finished text from Evernote into my word document which takes about 30 seconds. It costs 14.95/month but dictionary and synching were worth it for me. Also, like the first commenter, I stopped dictating quotation marks and that really cleaned things up.
Thanks for the time you spend on the podcast. We appreciate it!
You had me at Evernote!!! I LOVE Evernote. Wrote one of my earlier books on it, when I had my first baby and didn’t get a lot of computer time. 🙂
Jo, when you mentioned not being able to listen to someone read your audio, you spoke to my soul, man. Podium Publishing are working with Sean Runnette to narrate my space opera series. The first two books dropped recently. I tried listening to the first chapter of each and I wanted to puke!!! What little I got through was amazing! Podium couldn’t have selected a better narrator…but I just have a “thing” about listening to someone else speak words that I penned.
Glad it isn’t just little ol’ me 🙂
Keep up the fantastic job with the podcast. Couldn’t be happier that you guys are finally back…and with Andrea to boot! 😀
A kindred spirit! For the first audio book I self-produced, I had to listen to auditions and it made me squirm. The person I ended up picking, aside from being superb, got the job because she pronounced the word strawberries “strawbreeze” and I was like, “Okay, that’s adorable. I don’t have to listen to the rest of this.”
I swear the fact I don’t have to proof-listen to my own stuff is the best part of having someone pick up the audio book rights.
I purchased Dragon Pro for the whopping $3 bills and now it will not work on the new 16in MacBook Pro I bought. I was fuming! And I think there is a little underhanded play going on between Apple/Dragon because I discovered the new Voice Control under the accessibility’s setting is EXACTLY the same as the copy of Dragon Pro I purchase. Voice Control comes free with Mac and I must say that it works 100% than Dragon. 99.9% accurate. Correction is no longer a problem, etc. So, all-in-all, I’m happy I can now dictate better, but still angry over the money.