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Would Dame Agatha have used Dragon Naturally Speaking instead, if it had been available? Since she could afford a secretary, perhaps not. As her grandson Mathew Prichard explains, a secretary typed up her dictation into a typescript, which Christie would correct by hand. Mystery writer Agatha Christie dictated perhaps half of her 66 books using a Dictaphone, an office recording device which entered popular use after World War II.

Some very successful writers have been dictating writers. Of course, in earlier times a dictating writer would use a secretary or a spouse to transcribe their books, because software hadn’t been invented. Word-smithing doesn’t discourage me, it energizes me. I have a confidence, borne out of long experience, that I will be able to improve the awkward or silly sentences that I so often come up with.

As I work, the voice I hear is not a dismissive critic but a helpful editor. Hypocritical? No, because my writing isn’t inhibited when I edit as I write. I have advised writers write first, edit later and to turn off their internal editor. It’s best not to analyze what you just wrote if it inhibits you from writing more. Ironically, I give beginning writers the opposite advice. Dictating in complete sentences would work well with speech recognition software today. Some modern authors could learn to work the same way. In those days, this was a universal writing technique, not only for novels and essays, but for every writing task, including letters and personal correspondence. So what did writers do when revisions were costly? They would work out the sentence in their heads first and only then write it down in final form. When writers had to copy every new draft by hand, they didn’t make draft after draft. Every revision meant increased cost in materials and labor: buying paper, spending time, paying a secretary. Before paper became common in the 1400s, the typical writing material was parchment, often made from sheepskin. And not just because Chaucer did not use a computer. The writing process that you lean on today might be unrecognizable to the writers of past ages. The Greek poet Homer probably dictated the entire Illiad and Odyssey because, according to tradition, he was blind. Many classics of ancient literature were created purely by talking. However, some of the greatest authors of past centuries might be confused. People are different, and for some potential writers, the choice is between dictation and nothing.Īt least one award-winning investigative journalist and screenwriter has dismissed the idea of writing by dication, saying “Talking is not writing.” Many modern authors would agree. Others have a different kind of challenge – the words flow when they talk, but dry up when they type. Some have physical challenges, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, that make it difficult or impossible to use a keyboard. It might work for you.įor some writers, dictation had better work. I suggest you take all her complaints to heart – which I did in my previous article. In 2012, YA novelist Justine Larbalestier wrote a blog post Why I Cannot Write a Novel With Voice Recognition Software and updated it three times since. The speed bottleneck is often in your head, not your fingers. But that doesn’t matter much if you can’t think faster than you can type.

Maybe you can dictate faster than typing. For many writers, dictating a book instead of typing it just doesn’t work. You have a right to disagree with my previous post Writing with Speech Recognition Software. Can you write a book or a novel with speech recognition software? By Michael