211: My Game Changing Writing Tool

 

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My Gamechanging Writing Tool

Hello, welcome to your Big Creative Live Podcast. I'm Katie Wolf. Thanks for being here. I'm very, very excited about this episode. Okay, I like want to preach about this thing from a pulpit because I love it so much. And actually, this was inspired. A former coaching client sent me a message on Instagram because I had shared that I was starting to write a new book and using this tool or this process in writing. And she's like, have you done, would you consider doing a podcast episode on this? I think this would be interesting, or I don't remember exactly what she said. And I was like, sure that I had done an episode on dictating. Spoiler, that's what the game-changing tool is. It's dictation, dictating a book. And I was like, sure that we had done an episode on it. But I went back and looked. I searched dictation and I like scrolled through the last six months of episodes. And I know that I've talked about it in other episodes as part of my process, but we've never done like a full deep dive episode on it. So that's what today is. I'm going to talk you through how I use it, my process, my tips, the whole thing from start to finish. Because again, like I'm not being dramatic when I say that this has completely changed my writing process, my writing life. Hell, you know what? Let's go big. It's changed my life.

As someone who is busy and can find it difficult to even carve out 20 minutes to write, because I'm in a busy season of life, this is how I do it. So I want to give a little bit of context in case you're a new listener to the podcast. Hi, welcome. I am an agent and author. I have written three books. None of them are published yet. I'm hoping that one will be soon. I have a literary agent. I'm represented by Molly Glick at Creative Artist Agency. The most recent book I wrote was a thriller, a psychological thriller. And I've now started working on a new book because once that book is out, like, and you know, my agent has it or it's on submission, whatever point we are in the process, I have to start something new. I don't have to, but I just want to. So I have a few thousand words written of a new book. And yeah, so the book that my agent has currently, and I'm just waiting to hear back from her if it's ready to go out in submission or not, I wrote 90% of this book through dictation. I set a challenge for myself last fall, so in the fall of 2024. I had just been putzing around with this book. I got the idea for it a couple years ago and I started writing a bit, but I just wasn't thrilled with the direction of it. And I don't know.

So the idea wasn't new. It's not like I came up with the idea in the first, on day one of the 30 day like challenge that I did for myself. But I wanted to get the first draft out quickly. It's what I said a challenge that I would write a first draft in 30 days. And the way that I did that, the way that was possible was through dictation. So let me just cover what I mean when I say that. I just mean that you have some sort of tool, whether it's on your phone, your computer, your iPad, whatever, and you talk it out. You talk into the microphone and it transcribes what you say and you just talk out your book as opposed to sitting down and typing it on a keyboard. I know that I shouldn't say I know. I guess there's some AI involved in that. Like it's an accessibility thing. I don't know. I don't know. I don't, to be honest, I don't really understand like the different types of AI. What I do is I open up my Gmail. I have a Gmail app on my phone that is tied to my personal e-mail, not my work e-mail. And I will compose an e-mail to myself and I'll hit the microphone button and talk. So I guess there's some sort of artificial intelligence there maybe that like transcribes it, but In case you're like wondering if there's any weirdness about AI, I'm very, very, very anti-AI in the creative process, generative AI at least.

But this isn't, like it's not changing anything that I write. In fact, it's messing it up frequently. Like I have to go back and edit it because it misunderstands things that I say. It misspells things. It puts punctuation in weird places, even though sometimes I say to add punctuation. It's a mess because it's just, writing down, it's just transcribing the words that it thinks that I'm saying. So there's no sort of like AI tool that's putting its own spin on what I'm writing. Everything comes from me. It's just me talking it out loud and then having a tool that dictates what I'm writing. So I just want to clarify that real quick. Again, I'm still very anti-AI, like generative AI, at least in the writing process. But this is different. For me, I draw the line at generative AI tools because I know that some writers are going to use tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid, and technically there is AI involved in those things. But I think we can all agree there's a massive difference between a tool like Grammarly or a tool like Speechify, where it reads things out to you, or even this. There's a huge difference between that and like ChatGPT doing brainstorming or filling out scenes for you or writing your dialogue or telling you how to edit your book or write your book or actually writing the book. Like those are, there's a very clear difference between those two things and that's where the line is for me.

It's not, yeah, that's just how I feel about it. Anyway, so let's get back to the process. I mentioned the Gmail app, but this is what it looks like. So in last fall, 90% of this book was dictated, and a big chunk of that was honestly dictated in the car when I was taking my daughter to daycare and then picking her up. Her daycare is a little far away, so we have a bit of a haul, a commute to get her there and then to go pick her up. And what I would do is open up that Gmail app, Compose a new e-mail to myself, press the microphone button, and then set my phone down on the little console thingy in the middle of the car, so that I wasn't looking at it when I was driving, and I could just talk. My... dictation on the Gmail app on the keyboard will time out after, I've never actually timed it, but I'm guessing it's like 30 seconds. So if I go for a 30 second stretch without talking, it will stop the microphone because it thinks you're done talking. So you might have to go in and, you know, press the microphone thing again. But for the most part, it's fine because I can take short pauses, I can gather myself, I can think of how I want to end a sentence and start a new sentence. and it's fine. There's no interruption in the dictation tool. The other way that I dictated is I would walk and I would put my headphones on, my little earbuds that come with the Apple, with the iPhone, put the phone in my pocket and then just talk it out as I was walking.

And every so often I would like check just to double, you know, make sure that it was actually still dictating. Every once in a while I will find that it stops and then it's annoying because I have to go back and look at the spot it ended, That's pretty rare. And I just walked. So that's even what I've started doing with this new book. So for example, a couple days ago, I went for a walk and it was a short walk. It was like a 15 minute walk in the morning. Sam was on duty with my daughter, like getting her ready and taking her into daycare. So I just had a bit of time. I went for a walk at like 6.45 A.m. and I dictated 900 words in that 15 minute stretch. Dictation, part of the reason I love it is that it allows me to get words out quickly, and it just seems like a more efficient way for me to process and for me to write. Now, the downside of dictating is that there is a bit more time spent afterwards to... edit what you've written, but that's okay. For me, I much prefer the editing process, and I just want to get the draft out quickly. So if dictation allows me to get words on the page quickly, then I'm fine with that trade-off. You might not be. I get that, but for me, it's fine. So I'll talk you through the rest of my process. So let's say I've set the phone down in the car. I've talked it out, dictated for 15 minutes. Let's say I've gotten 1000 words. Okay. I will copy and paste those 1000 words into a Word document either that day or later on. And I know that you might be like, why don't you just dictate it directly onto Microsoft Word? And the only answer for that is I just feel some weirdness about it and I want to like prove that I wrote it and I want to like have a backup copy. of it, so I e-mail it to myself. That's the honest answer.

So yeah, I just have a backup of it. And then I copy and paste it into Microsoft Word so that the document grows. And if I dictate like 3 days in a row, or I dictate a couple different points in one day, I might just wait, and then I'll have a couple of emails that I've composed to myself, like over the course of a day or a couple days. And then I'll, in one batch, just copy and paste all those over into the Microsoft Word doc. When I did this last fall, I thought maybe I could dictate and then immediately pivot to edit what I had written. And I found that wasn't the best use of my time. Now that I'm saying that, I honestly can't remember how I did it last year. I don't think I went back and edited in those 30 days that I was dictating. I think I just... kept going. And editing, I don't mean like editing the story and making it better. I mean purely just like editing the sentences. Because again, you're dictating, it misunderstands things. There's weird punctuation. You have to clean up just to make it like comprehensible so that you're able to read it. But I can't remember. I don't know. Honestly, now, this point in the process, when I'm starting to write a new book, what I'm going to do is just wait. I'm just going to I'm going to wait and edit it once I'm done because I find that it helps me to just stay in flow. Even if I'm dictating in short sprints throughout like a day or a couple days or a few times a week, it's just better for my process and my brain to focus on going forward and not like going back to edit what I've already written. Even if it is not making changes to the story and actual writing, it's just cleaning up all the grammar. I just want to wait and do that later. So that's my process.

I don't go back and read what I've written previously, but that's always been my process. I try to just keep moving forward because I think it's easy for me to get caught in a loop or to want to go back and change things if I do that. So I just move forward. We're not looking back. We're just moving forward. So I want to give you a couple of tips if this is something that you want to try. First is to I just want to reassure you if you feel any sort of weirdness about using dictating, because I did in the beginning. Not that I was ever like, oh, I don't think I should use this, doesn't count as real writing, but there was just a bit of like, almost like this was too good to be true. Almost like I was cheating or getting away with something. I don't know. how to explain it. There just was a bit of weirdness. And at this point, I've come to realize, like, this is an incredible tool for me. I know that it won't work for everyone. It's not like a one-size-fits-all thing. It's not a magic wand. But for me, this works really well. And so I just want to, step one, I just want to like reassure you, if you feel any weirdness, don't. As long as you are writing everything yourself, meaning that you're not like dictating into ChatGPT. And then ChatGPT is like improving the sentences and improving the dialogue and making suggestions for you on where to insert character details or setting details. Like that's different. Again, that's using generative AI. But if it's just you dictating, like don't feel any weirdest about it. That's just part of your process and it's awesome. Step #2 is to play around. Well, okay, step #2 is actually to just be aware that it might feel weird at first. You might feel like a bit of pressure that you have to talk quickly. You might have the microphone or the dictation thing time out and you have to press it again. That's okay. you will get over that weirdness pretty quickly. I did early on. It didn't take long before I was like, oh wow, I really like this. Because it does feel strange. It's a completely new way of writing. It's a completely new way of storytelling. And so there is that little bit of a learning curve, but you will get over that pretty quickly. So that's.2 I want to make.

Step 3, you can figure out your own process in terms of the logistics of how this works, whether it's dictating directly into Google Docs, whether it's dictating directly into Microsoft Word, whether it's doing something like I'm doing. The actual form doesn't really matter as long as you're like, it's just like writing, like sitting down at a computer and typing out the words. You can use any writing tool that you want. If Google Docs works for you, awesome. If Word works for you, if Scrivener works for you, if writing it in like on your Notes app on your phone, that's awesome. It doesn't matter the format, just make sure that you're clear on how this is going to work and to make a decision about how you're going to do it. And then the last thing I will say with dictation, you can play around with punctuation, or not the last thing, I do have a couple more things. You can play around with punctuation, rather. So you can tell when you're dictating, you can tell it, let's say I'm asking a question, like a character is asking a question in a scene that I'm writing. So the character's dialogue is, should we go to the grocery store? And it's a question mark. When you were dictating it out, you would say, should we go to the grocery store? Question mark. You can play around with doing that punctuation if you want, or you can just go through kind of vomit, like word vomit, and then go through and clean it up later. You can play around with what works best for you.

Oh, another tip. Play around with Not multitasking. I think I said that earlier. I don't know what the exact term is. Like doing something else while you're writing. You can just sit there and do this. You can lie down and dictate. You can whatever. But I've found driving, walking, even cooking, that's a great opportunity for me to dictate because I'm fully engaged in the task that I'm doing. Like when I'm driving, I'm not looking at my phone, I'm paying attention to the road, but I'm just talking. And same with when I'm going for a walk. I'm engaged, I'm looking around, I'm fully present for the walk, but my body is doing something and it helps, I don't know, it's almost like it lowers the pressure a bit. if I'm able to have my body engaged in something while my mind is engaged in the act of writing and creating and storytelling, or even just brainstorming too. And same with cooking. I mean, I'm able to focus on the task that I'm doing, but walking and driving and cooking are all tasks that don't require an intense, intense level of focus and concentration. Like I could never dictate while I'm, I don't know, doing something else that requires full focus, like reading or something, you know? But play around with it, especially if you're someone who has a hard time focusing. If you feel scattered, if you feel like you have a lot of like nervous energy or you have a lot of anxiety, doing something with your body while you're doing this can really, can help the process.

Again, I've just found like it lowers the resistance. It makes it feel very low stakes, very casual, very easy. All I'm doing is having a conversation. I mean, a conversation in quotes because there's no one on the other side of it, but all I'm doing is talking. It's very low stakes. mistakes. I'm talking for 10 minutes and then boom, I'm done. And I've gotten, 600 to 1000 words in. It's great. One day at the very end of the 30 days that I did last fall, I was like, close to the end of the 30 days and I had a lot left to go. And there was one day where I dictated like 8,000 words. And I have never ever written that much in my entire life. I've never sat down at a computer and written anything close to 8,000 words. So just the fact that I was able to do that many indictation in one day is amazing. And of course, there was a huge push because I really wanted to get it done in the 30 days. I almost did it. I almost gave up because I was like, there's so much left to do. I don't know if I can do this. I'm trying to pull up right now to see how many words my rough draft was. I want to say it was around 60,000 words, 60 something 1000 words. So it was on the shorter side. Let's see. Writing. I felt like I had a writing tracker. I know I had a writing tracker for this. Writing tracker.

Well, anyways, I don't remember. But the point is, it was shorter. It was on the shorter end, but that was okay. Again, for me, I really wanted to just prioritize getting the first draft out quickly. And if that's how you are, where it's difficult for you to get the first draft out, but you really enjoy the editing process, I definitely recommend trying this. So those are my tips. I think it's a game changer. I think it's like absolutely how I will go forward writing this. The other thing that I like about it while I'm cooking or driving or like even folding laundry, I have to do those things anyway. So if I can get two things done, I can prioritize my creative work, which is important to me, it's important to me that I write, and then also do the thing that I would be doing anyway. why not do that? I just think it's, I just think it's great, truly. And also, one more thing I'll share. My last book had a lot of dialogue in it because there were multiple characters that were present at this conference and there was like this motivational speaker guru person who was talking a lot and coaching them through things. And there just was a lot of dialogue in this book, more dialogue than any book I've ever written. And so having the ability to actually talk the words out myself when I was dictating helped me get into the mindset of those characters and was so helpful. And then, honestly, it almost felt like the words were a little bit more authentic and realistic because I was talking them out as I was dictating. So that was a huge plus that I didn't expect for writing dialogue.

I'll just say, if you were writing a particularly dialogue-heavy scene, Even if you don't plan to dictate the rest of your book, experiment with it if you want for dialogue because it can be very helpful. So, all right, that's the deep dive into this game-changing tool. Again, I will fully be dramatic and say it's changed my life because it truly has. And I'm excited to keep going with this new book. It's also a thriller. Yeah, I guess that's all I'll say about it now. This is, it's a thriller. Yeah, I'll share, maybe I'll share more later, but I still feel like I'm figuring out a bit about it, but that's okay. I know it'll all get clarity the more that I get into the story. So. Try this out. I would love, love, love y'all's feedback on this. If you try it and it works for you, please let me know. You can send me a DM on Instagram at Katie Wolf Writes. And also just a reminder, if you want to follow my personal slash author accounts, it's @theKatieWolf on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. That's where I'm posting more personal content, just like stuff about my life as an editor and a working mom. But then also we'll be incorporating author content hopefully soon. I talk about my writing a bit and like writing a new book, but You can follow that if you'd like. So, all right, thank you. See you next week. Thank you so much for listening.

 

 

Katie Wolf