My Novel Writing Secret – Shhh Don’t Tell

I have a secret, a big, fat, secret. It’s increased my daily word count by a third. Do you want to know what it is? Then read on…

I stopped writing my novel weeks ago.

What? How can you have an amazing word count and have stopped writing, you ask? Let me tell you how.

I started dictating my novel.

I’m using a handy dictation tool on my Chromebook and speaking out my novel as it comes into my head. It took a fair while to get used to it, but now, after weeks of NaNoWriMo practice, I am a whizz at it.

Here is a small list of how dictation has improved my novel writing –

Get more words down in the same amount of time. Enough said. Who wouldn’t want to increase productivity without spending money or extra stress?

Improve the quality of dialogue. When you dictate speech it is more authentic, as, well, speech is spoken word, so doesn’t it make more sense to dictate dialogue?

Less temptation to edit as you write. Nearly every post about dictation mentions this. Dictate helps you get into the mindset of telling a story and stops you becoming distracted by editing as you go.

Kinder to your back. Back pain and RSI can cripple an author. We simply aren’t designed to sit hunched over a computer all day. With dictation you can pop on a headset and wander around your laptop – no back strain for us!

This is a small list, there are plenty more reasons to look into dictation – if you are interested I recommend checking it out. If you are a seasoned pro I would love to hear from you. 

 

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