Quirky Perceptions

You only need to break two metacarpals to get wildly sidetracked from writing and other creative pursuits which is why I haven’t updated the website in a while. That and I am in the process of buying a house, which is going well, but all in all it has taken away time and energy. But mostly its the hand.

And while in the grand scheme of things its not a major injury, it has been debilitating. The short version of what happened; it turns out security doors are harder that my bones. Especially if one slams on your hand when you aren’t looking. I was not amused.

Please enjoy this x-ray and the associated distress.

What has this experience taught me?

Life will happen, accidents will happen, and you will have to adapt.

For work and for my personal writing I had to change, amend, or outright write off deadlines and goals that were unattainable. This sucked the motivation right out. I had finally established a strong writing routine, consistently producing around 500+ words daily, and over night it was gone. So I adapted and found new tools to help me.

It is inevitable, that something like it will happen to you, so take it as an opportunity to reorient yourself and try different ways of doing things. For me, I settled into a routine of reviewing, revising and working on the world building for the novel. That latter one is just reading a lot. I recommend it.

The other thing I discovered that allowed me to continue working professionally and on my writing was the speech-to-text option in Windows 11. It is an accessibility that allows you to dictate directly through your device microphone and the tool will transcribe it word for word.

Use the Window key + H to access the tool. Read more here.

My personal use case is for email and light writing, but like most things its not perfect.

Its awkward to use

To be clear, this is not like using Alexa or Siri. You are essentially talking to yourself and there is no fancy filter to fix your mishaps. In the beginning it will feel weird. You will mumble, stutter, say the wrong word, etc. but once you get used to it, it will be fine.

Consider what you want to write first, then speak slowly and clearly, enunciating every word fully. Don’t be alarmed if what is appearing on the screen is incorrect. Finish it first, then fix any mistakes.

You need editing

While impressive, its not perfect. If you’re not a native speaker, or have a tendency to mumble, or even speak too fast, it will have trouble recognizing what you say. Grammar is also finicky, but you can disable automatic-punctuation depending on your preference.

Just get the basics down and edit it.

It wont work public

Ignoring the social aspects of speaking to yourself in public, the tool doesn’t work well in noisy environments. As of writing this, its not capable of separating out your voice pattern from others.

At work I had the pleasure of accidentally transcribing most of what my colleagues said, which was hilarious to read, but made it unusable.

And lastly, a quick aside on the novel.

As of right now, I am back to my writing schedule, which remains the same 250 new words every day until the first draft is done. Right now, the novel has hit 47.700 words, which is about 2/3 of the way towards my end goal. I hope to have the first draft finished by the end of summer, so stay tuned if you want to keep up.

Stay safe and don’t break anything!