Spoiled By Dragon

I'm not sure what I have done it anything but all of a sudden originated had difficulties with my Dragon software. The software is used to verbally dictate the things that I write each day. Needless to say I rely heavily on the software which probably has been a mistake over the years. Before the software, a gift from Dianne years ago, I typed everything with one hand and a peg, usually a pencil which I held upside down so the erasure would hit the keys, it my right hand since I didn't have an functional enough to work the keys on my right side. I was relatively accurate all things considered and I did okay for my own writing. I would never hand something in that I hadn't had someone else go over first for either spelling and/or retyping. When computers came online and are available ubiquitously the onboard spell checks were a godsend for me. I guess this is what I really began to realize more and more on technology in my writing. For spell check as good as it is still misspelled the word right but it may not be the right word if that makes sense.

I have to admit there's something sensually, physically satisfying with typing even my pathetic excuse for actuating the keys of my electric typewriters. I could do it I can feel myself during the typing and it felt good. It's kind of amazing to me once I had gotten and used to dictating to Dragon how quickly I could actually get something written. Not that it's a race but what used to seem to take forever to cobble out my 500 words for the blog not to be blown off in 10 minutes if I know what I'm writing and comfortable with the end results. Granted, I need to spend more time editing but dictating is certainly less physically demanding than typing those keys but there's still something wonderful about hitting each key. In my minds eye, when I'm typing with my hands I have this vision of the back of one of the old Hemingway book I had for ever sitting on my bookshelf. I think about it sometime in the 80s it was a glossy paperback edition with a picture of the writer on the back page typing two fingers hitting the keys whatever old-time typewriter he was using. I can identify with the feeling that image portrayed. I could tell Hemingway loved getting the words out but I think even more he liked the physical process of hitting the keys with his fingers over and over and over again until the novel popped out. I understand this. Then how come I guess is the question, don't I go back to strike in the keys on my keyboard with one hand and a pencil? I guess the easy answer is not Hemingway and the more accurate if not truthful answer is that I'm lazy. Once, I've gotten the nack down even more importantly got the right microphone plugged in the right outlet on the computer so that the system could basically hear me I became trapped with the ease of talking and the microphone and see in the words appear on the screen and then on the paper.

So obviously I'm not going to give up my speech to text equipment what I do need to do is break into my savings and purchase an updated copy of DragonDictate that will be the real challenge…