Walking and Talking

Gorgeous sunny day here in Wisconsin today, so naturally I grabbed my little voice recorder doohickey and hit a local bike trail for a walk. I'm not skilled at dictating fiction, but getting better. For me, it's really a brain dump with some dialogue, description and notes to myself. I hope to get better at it because it's extremely efficient. Out and back was one hour, got the final two-thirds of my short story sketched out. Once I got into the flow, I was on fire!

I got some exercise and much needed sunlight exposure in the process. The only downside was getting stopped by an old farmer who wanted to chew the fat. It was all good, though. He's going to be a character in something, I'm sure. He wanted to talk about gas prices and "orl" companies. Yes, "orl" companies. He had an embroidered deer on his corduroy ball cap. He told me he had bad lungs.

I had never thought of dictating fiction until I Kevin Anderson spoke about it at Superstars Writing Seminar in Salt Lake City (Next one is in Vegas, April 2012. Do not miss it!) Read Kevin's blog post about the topic for more info. It takes practice, but Kevin's reasoning is good. We're trying to tell stories, what's more natural than using one's voice to tell it. Typing or writing long hand adds friction to the process.

Besides, I need to get away from the computer screen. My eyes are about to burn out of my head from looking at it all day every day.

This was a great way to get a first draft done. I don't dictate very clean prose, so there's a lot of fixing to be done. I transcribed 1200 words of it when I got back and probably changed over half of it as I typed.