I’ve been doing a lot lot lot of longhand writing these days. I go through spurts like this, and it’s all fine and good, especially when I have really pretty new notebooks like the new Clairefontaine notebooks currently in my possession. The paper is so smooth and heavy and I need that, since I write with more of a marker-like pen.
And I’m sure there’s a better description than marker-like pen, but I’m having one of those months where I can’t think of the right word for anything or the right name for anyone and I’m doing a lot of calling for Gus, Zoo, Lily…until I get to the right name. My grandmother used to do that. I used to think it was funny.
Felt tip! But that’s not exactly right either.
So anyway, the downside to all this longhand writing is that I have to obviously type it all into the computer. And I’m usually pretty good about keeping up with it and not letting it get past 20 pages or so. But I think at this point I have about 50 pages to type in. And the thing is, I change things / add things / flesh things as I’m typing, so in a way it’s good but I’ve been putting it off because OMG, a lot of work.
Before I bought the Mac, I’d bought myself Dragon Naturally Speaking, which would allow me to talk the words into the computer. (Talk the words into the computer – WTF?) You know what I mean. But the Dragon version is for windows and although my desktop is still windows I was thinking I should probably get a Mac version and then I was like maybe I’ll load it into windows and try it out for these 50 pages but then I sit there and go, oh look, a Real Housewives of New York marathon is on and then, well, yeah…
Anyway, I guess I should probably try the speech recognition program. Soon. But then I’d have to train it to recognize my voice. I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t have a funny accent like Larissa or Maya or Amie.
I used to write almost exclusively in longhand. But that keying stuff in later got to be SUCH a drag. Now I have a laptop so I just type directly. Makes life much easier.
Talk the words into the computer – WTF?
How else would you say this? It made perfect sense to me. But then maybe that’s not all that comforting.
If I lived closer I would volunteer to come over and type it all for you. But they you couldn’t edit along the way. But I would get a sneak peak at what you are work on:)
OMG – LOL, Tori, it’s comforting to me, but I’m not sure how sane that makes either of us
Greta, you better be careful – one of these days I’m going to beg you to be my beta reader and you’ll have to read my horribly ugly first draft and you’ll cry…seriously.
I do almost all of my writing longhand because I do tend to make a lot of changes while I’m writing. Plus, then I do extra little tweaks while I’m typing it in. Good luck with your 50 pages!
Do you promise?