I'm just commenting to keep an eye on this post. I can type around 3,000 words before my tendinitis starts kicking in. My brother bought me Dragon Naturally Speaking, but I'm yet to try it because I worry about how much editing I'll have to do.

 

That was how I felt. 3,000 was okay, 5,000 was pushing it. Thing is, I can easily do 10,000 words a day, but then my hands and my back hurt so much that I can't write for a day or two. I have this sneaking suspicion that if I just bite the bullet and work through the learning curve that I'll end up being able to write much faster and get my episodes out more quickly. Story development is fast for me. It's the typing it out that takes forever.

My biggest fear is that I'll take a few weeks working through the learning curve and be no better off, as well as having lost a few weeks of productivity to boot!

 

Yeah, you get in the habit of doing this with every number: "She was walking down with spell f-o-u-r of her friends period."

And it's never going to be as accurate as typing. Just isn't. But it's pretty good, especially after you train it.

The hardest thing, I think, is trying to formulate whole sentences in your head before saying them out loud. It just feels weird to me. It's not the way I think when I'm typing at all. Typing just seems to "flow" better for me. But it's doable if you get used to it.

Usually, when it mishears you, the second option is the right one. So, you can say, "Select 'Whateveritmisheard'." And when it does, it will give you three options in like a dropdown. It's usually the 2nd one that's right, so you just say, "Choose 2." And it fixes it. And then "Go to end" to get back to end of what you were saying to continue.

I like to do several paragraphs at a time without even looking at the screen (because the mistakes make me sooo effing frustrated!!). Then when I get to the end of my train of thought, I'll go back and edit those paragraphs and then move on.

It slows down if you try to dictate into a file that's 50,000 words long. Better to dictate into the Dragon Pad (more accuracy that way too) and then copy paste into Word or Scrivener or whatever you use. You will have to clean stuff up, like the smart quotes. (GRR.)

Um... keep a glass of water handy. You'll be surprised how much it will hurt your throat.

Basically, you just have to play with it until you get better at it. It's good to have in a pinch. I hope it works for you! It's always sort of second-best for me, but I can be productive with it if I need to.

 

I'm just commenting to keep an eye on this post. I can type around 3,000 words before my tendinitis starts kicking in.

Are you doing anything for this? I'm the same age and have the same problem as you. I stopped writing for over a month, hardly used a computer, but the rest didn't seem to help.

 

I used it for a while, but switched back to typing.  It takes a while to get used to speaking the punctuation, and you can create vocal shortcuts to ease that a little.  Also, the pro version allows you to import mp3s, so you can record offline and then have it translate it all at once.

My problems with it were probably shortcomings on my part, rather than the program. First, it was fairly accurate, but inaccurate enough to be distracting.  At least for me, that distraction was enough to pull me out of my thoughts, and I'd be continuously fixing mistakes instead of thinking about the story.

The other problem, which is somewhat related to the first, is that I never felt comfortable speaking the story instead of typing it. I never got in the zone where the words just seemed to flow, which happens all the time when I type.  Perhaps that would have come with time, but I discovered that in the long run I could actually output more words with typing than with Dragon.

When I did use it, I used a hybrid of typing and speaking.  I might start a sentence with my fingers, and then once I knew how the sentence would end I'd finish it with speaking. But even then, I'd have to re-read what I just wrote to make sure there were no mistakes, where if you're typing, you fix them as you go along.  It didn't work for me to speak an entire page and then go back and check, because sometimes Dragon mishears you so completely, you have no clue what you were trying to say in the first place.

All that said, if for some reason I couldn't type or my typing was limited, Dragon is a great alternative to have available.

Edited to add:  Another limitation it has, at least for me, is that I have to be alone to use it. Could be because of what I write, but I can imagine other authors not wanting people to hear what they're writing.

 

I've thought more than once about DNS, but can't afford it.

For several years I've suffered from post-stroke neuropathic pain in my left side (I'm left-handed). After little more than an hour's typing the fingers on that hand are in agony. A daily word count of anything over 500 words is an achievement, and it would take up to three or four hours to do that.

My husband bought me a Cherry mechanical keyboard, which I love and would never go back to typing on anything else, but it only helped ease the pain a little. Then a fellow writer suggested I try a Dvorak keyboard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard

It is quite simply wonderful! Yesterday, after the same amount of time, I'd typed 963 words without a twinge.

I'm learning the key/letter positions from this site: http://learn.dvorak.nl/ and you can use your qwerty keyboard to do so - so it's easy enough to give it a try. I haven't even needed to buy a new k/b - hubby bought a $2 set of letter stickers and put them on the trusty Cherry.

I'll admit it's a steep learning curve, though I'm sure I'll become more proficient with time and practice. The best thing is I am out of pain and typing no longer hurts at all.

Good luck, Ryk, and I hope you find as satisfactory a solution.

 

For what it's worth, when I upgraded my computer and couldn't find my Dragon disk, I switched to the Windows 8.1 built-in text-to-speech tool and found it quite comparable.

I always dictated into Notepad and copied into Word. Dragon was MUCH faster that way.

Proofreading afterward is a whole different challenge. You'll find perplexing homonyms all over the manuscript.

I find when I switch back to typing that I'm sometimes frustrated with how slow the keyboard is. The overall process isn't any faster with Dragon for me, though. I use up the time I save either making corrections or pausing to think before I dictate. It didn't take me long to get used to dictating punctuation and so on.

 

UPDATE:

I trained Dragon using their supplied texts. I also had it scan all my previous work, then I trained it on all the words it did not recognize, most of which were made up. (There were over 500 of them.) Then I spent a few days reading and dictating scenes from previous work to determine what problems I might have to overcome. So far, this is what I've found:

1. It capitalizes ALL ranks. ("Lieutenant Smith" vs. "the lieutenant.")
2. It capitalizes the first word following a period, which is a good thing. However, it does the same thing following an exclamation point or a question mark as well. So the dialog ""Yes, Sir!" he answered." comes out ""Yes, Sir!" He answered."
3. It doesn't always get the apostrophe in there when needed. (Then again, neither did I.)
4. I have to pronounce "aye" as "I - YEE" so that it transcribes it as "aye" and not "I". (I can get used to the, I suppose.)
5. Hyphenated words are a PAIN in the arse, because Dragon puts in spaces automatically between words. So "comm-set" becomes "comm - set."

I'm sure that I can find work-arounds for all of these problems. With my new headset mic, the application is amazingly accurate in it's transcription. About the only time it get's things wrong is when I mumble or I talk too fast.

However, the biggest problem that I noticed for me is that having to speak the punctuation distracts me from the story. I was reading a descriptive passage from a tense battle scene, and I found myself getting into the action. Then I had to say "New line open quote italics on Missiles inbound exclamation point Five seconds to impact exclamation point italics off close quote new line"

See what I mean?  Distracting.

So I think I've come up with an idea. I ordered a configurable/programmable USB keypad. It's about 6"x4", so I can hold it in my hands like a game controller. I'll set up larger keys for commonly used commands like "enter, double quotes, period, comma, question mark, exclamation point," and "italics on/off." Hopefully, this will remove the distraction of having to speak commands and will still allow my to pace back and forth in my office as I dictate. (I'm trying to get away from sitting all day long.) I tried using the keyboard, and it did help, but a standard keyboard simply isn't laid out properly for such use.

In a perfect world, speaking the punctuation would not distract me to such extent. Hopefully, I'll get there someday. In the meantime, this device may help me bridge the gap.

 

I've used it. It takes awhile to train it and to train yourself, so "patience" is my best advice.

I type so much faster, and it requires so much fixing, I gave it up. It surprised me once when I tossed in a French phrase, possibly "Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point." or maybe "il faut souffrir..." and the darned thing got it correct. I just gaped at it. I think that means my French accent (which I know to be awful) might be better than my American English accent (which is native, but this doesn't mean it's not awful).

 

What mic did you get? I've been looking at ones on amazon, but having a hard time deciding from reviews which would work well.

For example, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0001DBZNM/ or http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QB57WM/