SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

Have you ever set yourself a huge goal and then instantly regretted it? Yep, same here. With the goal I’d set myself last week, I was starting to have some serious doubts halfway through the first morning of the week.

Review 21st – 27th April 2022

Here’s what last week’s goals looked like:

• Add 10,000 words to Running the Asset’s manuscript, taking it to 128,509.

Excuses, Excuses

CRPS is the douche bag that loves to give, give, and then give some more. Along with ever-increasing pain levels, I’ve not been sleeping much at all for a couple of weeks. I’m not telling you this for sympathy; it’s more of an excuse for my crazy obsessiveness when it comes to all things related to working around the disease.

The Crazy Part

Ever since I was diagnosed, I’ve had some form of voice-to-text software, going all the way from IBM’s ViaVoice through multiple versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking up to my last update on Dragon for Mac.

Dragon for Mac is no more. The company that made it ditched disabled Mac users a few years ago. Since then, I’ve been searching for a replacement, but there isn’t one that handles Scots accented English.

How It Went

Having spent my days off hunting for software that doesn’t exist (again), I thought I’d give a transcription app a shot. I dictated around 1,500 words in about fifty minutes. But, it felt weird and cold telling the story without seeing the words pop up on the screen as I said them. I carried on, thinking I’d fix it when I had the transcript… I never did finish fixing my words, mainly because the app couldn’t understand me.

I went into the afternoon, fearing that I’d never catch up or that I’d forget everything I’d dictated. Well, I was wrong, and I was right. I was wrong about not catching up; I managed more than my daily 2K words. I was right about forgetting everything I’d dictated earlier. What I got down in the afternoon was so, so much better.

By the time I’d finished on Friday, I’d completed Act IIB. I was excited, but increasing pain cast a shadow over the milestone.

Saturday was a bit of a blur. The moment I hit Act III, the scenes became a bit shorter, as they should, and I was really getting into the story. Sunday was the same, and then Monday…

Wow, Monday got me to the halfway point in the final Act, and I really didn’t want to stop. Even with the pain, and prior engagements, I wanted to keep writing. I’d left Elle and Adam at the peak of the external plot (the action-adventure plot) with their lives in the balance ?

As mentioned above, I obsessed all week over dictation while getting the words down. There is a silver lining to all that deep-diving into workarounds, and it’s that I’m going to have the embrace evil. The evil being a Windows laptop for dictation and then emailing the text to my Mac. I’m not ecstatic about it, but it means super-fast first drafts in the future! ?

Whoops, almost forgot my total for the week. The goal was 10,0000… gie’s a sec while I get the calculator. Wow, 12,068 words!

This Week’s Goal

I’m equal parts excited and hesitant about this week’s goal. Given the length of the scenes in Act III and what adding 10K words to the current total would take me to, there is every chance that I can finish the first draft this week. ? ?

• Add 10,000 words or more to take Running the Asset to THE END!

That’s it for today. Thanks for stopping by, and take care.

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