I wondered whether anyone had experience with using this sort of tool for writing. There are those that swear by it, but I imagine it would depend on your style, and of course how much privacy you had.

I'm interested in it as a way of freeing up my writing a bit, as I tend to edit as I write, which makes for slow progress.

Any experiences?

I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 and thought it was more hassle than it was worth. I think 9 is out now though, which is supposed to be much better; my doctor uses it and says it's fabulous, it even picks up his more obscure medical terms.

You also need a decent microphone. I stupidly bought the cheapest one I could find (about ten quid) and it was useless.

I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking and tried it, but it didn’t work for me. I have too much background noise in my office. (Fans, heaters, computers, etc.) The room has to be quiet, so the mic will only pick up your voice correctly.

It was fun to play with for a few hours, but then I went back to the keyboard. Even if Dragon Naturally Speaking worked properly, I would not use it. I can’t ‘think’ up story any faster than I type, and I do like to do a little lite editing as I type. Most of all, I just enjoy the feel of typing. When I am using the mic, I feel like I have a straight jacket over my mouth. You can’t make any incorrect sound or word, or it gets typed, and you are back to using the keyboard anyway.

Even if you don’t mind any of this and everything is working properly, I question the quality of the work. If you are making a formula story that does not require any ‘thinking’, it probably would work. But, if your story is not formula, and does require heavy thinking, the mic approach uses the first word that comes to your mind (lips), and causes you to ‘not think,’ but ‘produce words’. You end up with cotton candy copy which has no thought that went into it’s making.

I have read books that sounded like they were mic written. Endless pages of cotton candy copy that seem empty of substance. An example might me a formula romance novel.

But, having said all this, I suggest you go ahead and buy it and try it to find out for yourself.

Azel

Mischa, I had a look when I was suffering from mild RSI, and though it seemed that it was pretty accurate once you'd 'trained' it to recognise your voice, unscrambling what didn't come out right was quite fiddly. And you have to say punctuation, which would feel odd, perhaps. I suspect it's better for writing business letters or things where a lot of phrases are fairly standard. Even if you're trying not to edit, there'd be an awful lot of ums and errs to confuse it, I'd have thought.

Have you tried writing longhand? It's much less tempting to go back and fiddle. One of the best, most fluent scenes I've ever written was longhand, with such bright sun on the page I couldn't even see the marks on the page to tempt me to edit. When I typed it up I hardly changed a thing.

Emma

Thanks guys, I suspect you may be right. It's quite an expensive thing just to try - over a £100 if you include a decent microphone - so I may not bother.

Does anyone have a positive experience of using voice recognition?

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I am in the process of learning to touch type which I think might give me a little more fluidity.

I am in the process of learning to touch type which I think might give me a little more fluidity.

I'm sure it will. The better you are, the less of your brain is taking up with finding the damn letters, and if the words are ready and waiting in your head (as they have to be for voice-recognition software to work smoothly, by the sound of it) they can then just come reeling smoothly out of the ends of your fingers. For example, I'm typing this as fast as I'd write it longhand.

My daughter's learning at the moment. She's actually picked it up very quickly, but watching her frowning as her brain-cogs whirr to translate the letter she's looking at into a finger movement without looking at her hands reminds me just how un-intuitive a thing a keyboard is.

Emma

Great answers, and very interesting.

I have a lot of experience of using SR software, and developing it linguistically behind the scenes. I work for the company that produces Dragon Naturally Speaking and other speech recognition products, and I have done for the past eight years. I don't know how appropriate it is for me to answer you directly, but please WWMail me if I can help at all.

Luisa