Learning to flocking write again

Monday was frustrating. Very frustrating. It was the first day I sat down to dictate the novel, and boy was it hard work. You see writing a blog is very much like talking to someone about your writing, or anything else for that matter. Writing a novel, or any fiction, requires you to think a lot more about what you say before you say it. So this blog entry for example, is very much written, or in my case – spoken, on the hoof. (I’ve said it before, you can get away with a lot more here. Try that with a novel and you'll only get rambling prose.)

I would say the other important impact on dictating a novel, especially a fantasy novel, whatever speech recognition software you're using has to cope with the myriad of fantasy names that aren't part of everyday speech and cannot be found in the average dictionary. So when you talk about “Count Ordrane of Draak” what you actually get is “count ordering of drought”. Or perhaps “count ordering of drug”. Either way you find yourself amending the text but also the dictionary to make sure it doesn't happen again... Which invariably it does: computers are clever, and they are so intuitive, but they are also fallible
On Monday, what with all the correcting and deleting of erroneous text, I managed to write 1500 words in the time it would normally take me to type 3000 words. So basically dictating at the moment is halving my productivity. I am not the most patient of people, I admit, and my frustration often boiled over yesterday. In fact if one had read the unedited text from Monday one would have found various expletives dotted around paragraphs. Or rather they might have been expletives, but the software could not recognise swear words so instead of the obvious, “flock” or “ flocking hell” or “for flock’s sake” appeared time and time again as markers of my compounded frustration. Instead of a book about vampires and Demons, it was starting to look like a book about the migratory habits of birds.

And obviously a bit of frustration here and there means I am less thinking about the text, but more how I can achieve the text without having to type it. So I guess the quality in this first draft might be a little hit and miss while I get used to using speech recognition software. I can later change the contents during the drafting process and it's something I'm not too bothered about right now, but being an impatient soul, it galls me that it won't be perfect or near as dammit perfect from the start.

Not that I'm complaining too much. My learning curve is quite steep and I'm learning very quickly how to manipulate speech recognition software to recognise my voice and so that I can navigate around the computer with the least fuss possible. In fact I should be quite pleased with the way it is going, you see my dad had one of the first speech recognition programs on his computer and I remember trying to use it; it took an entire evening to write a simple paragraph. That was in the early 90s, and speech recognition was quite quite primitive (though still a little exciting, after all operating anything by speech alone is the stuff of science-fiction).
Now the software is a little bit more sophisticated, and it seems to recognise most of what I say. It seems a long way from the 80s and I can't help but think of that scene in Star Trek: the voyage home (come on, you don't have to be a Trekkie to remember this) where Chief engineer Scotty is sitting down at a 1980s computer trying to talk to it to make it work, resorting to talking down the mouse thinking that would work. What I'm doing now 13 years later is a far cry from the 1980s but not that far from the technology present in shows such as Star Trek, and while this technology is not quite perfect, it's getting there, and with computer power increasing with each generation of PC, speech recognition software will become more and more important in our lives.

Until then, and until I can get this thing to work 99% accurately to recognise my voice, I guess I'll have to get used to “flockings” and “ships”, and try to control my frustrations. Like the British rail advert said, and with a little tinkering, “we might get it wrong, but we're getting there
-- for flock’s sake...”

Change part one

Some of you might have gathered from the last blog entry that I've been suffering from RSI and because of this my visits to this blog and the Macmillan new writing blog have been few. A writer or any artist is expected to suffer for their art, which is perhaps a romantic notion of how one follows their craft. In reality when you have RSI or anything approaching a tendon or muscular strain doing anything such as using a mouse or typing on a keyboard is bloody hard work and painful. Add to that looking after a baby and practical concerns intrude. So where does that leave my writing? Well, I guess it means that I've had to put the third novel on hold. It's not something I wanted to do and it's been forced upon me, as my editor told me there is no point trying to write when in the back of my mind I’m trying to block out the pain curling up my wrists and throughout my fingers.
But I am a writer. It’s what I do. But how does a writer write without actually putting pen to paper or finger to keyboard? My imagination is not impaired, nor is my enthusiasm and I can’t stand not to write.
So apart from rehabilitating my wrists which may be a long process, I've been looking into other means to write. Dave Budd reminded me that Barbara Cartland used to dictate her novels (indeed I remember a comedy sketch on this very thing which at the time I thought purely daft -but now the irony is not lost on me), and so I thought ‘why not?’. But it's not so easy dictating anything let alone a novel. Writing is about what comes naturally to you, and I suppose simply sitting somewhere dictating fiction is not the most natural thing in the world. Indeed it's almost narcissistic in the same way it would feel to give your acceptance speech to the mirror for an award that doesn't exist. Most writers don't like the sound of their voices. We're not talking narrative voice here, but the sound of their own incessant droning as they sit in a quiet room talking to no one in particular. Believe me it's not easy but it can be overcome.

Indeed you might be surprised to know that this blog entry is entirely dictated, which might explain the slight change in narrative voice. After all some writers - including this writer - have an altogether different voice when it comes to writing than they do general conversing. But I can get away with it here because let's face it there are no airs and graces on informal blogs such as this.
Fiction is different. Writing books is different. Especially a series of books. Because in my case with the Secret War books, I have different a narrative voice and it's not the narrative voice that is present in this blog or when I talk to people. It will take a lot of getting used to to dictate a new book in an old voice. I am trying to do it now; I've been talking to myself in the shower a lot and at other times around the house to the point that Sarah must be thinking I'm losing my mind. I haven't quite graduated to talking to myself on the streets though that might happen... but it's something I must do if only to save myself discomfort and for the ability to do things that I've previously taken for granted.

This blog entry has taken around half an hour to write. It's not been that accurate and at times I've had to delete what I've dictated, but the majority of this blog (I'd say about 90%?), has been written using a speech recognition program on a computer - not a trusty assistant typing away while I lounge in a comfortable chair with tea and biscuits at my side. That's just as well because I have a habit of changing my mind and changing the order of what I want written – a trusty assistant would probably have quit by now!
I'm not entirely sure how long it will take to dictate fiction from the top of my head. It could take a lot longer than it takes me to type usually, because it does not feel natural. But I think with much perseverance, it will do. In fact it might even be a blessing, after all don't many writers speak their prose aloud after they've written it? I guess what I'm doing is the opposite or perhaps just the other way round; I can be sure that what I write sounds fine once enunciated rather than I hope what I write on the page may sound okay once I speak it aloud.

But I'm beginning to babble...

What I'm talking about here is a new regime. A regime where I might sound crazy talking to myself, but as long as the words are put down on screen and put down the way I want them to be written, then a little insanity is not much to ask for, is it?

Two good things, one blind thing

Well the good news is that I’ve started writing the third book today. I’m now 4,000 words into the first draft of The Fortress of Black Glass, and I’m quite pleased with how it’s gone. Other than showing I’m able to write under the influence of a three and a half month old baby (who wants constant attention and has started to laugh at anything and anyone), I’ve written these words with a burst blood-vessel under my eye-lid, looking more like Le Chiffre from Casino Royale, than a thirty-something writer, having to dab the blood from my eye periodically so I can see what I’m bloody doing. But it’s there on the screen, and it reads well, especially for a first draft (it usually takes me a couple of drafts to write something I’m that happy with.)

The second thing to be pleased about is that the MFWCurran website has been updated again, with interviews and reviews, the books and other announcements you may have caught here or might have passed you by. The contact details have yet to be updated but to beat the SPAM filter - if you want to get hold of me, e-mail mfwcurran@talktalk.net and put in the subject header: “Muskets and Monsters”. I’ve got a rule running on my e-mail that will weed this out from the spam…