Eventually, you may move into a world of total freedom from your keyboard, but it will take more than one day. The biggest limitation on dictation is going to be your body. If you start speaking eight hours straight every day, you will blow out your voice. You will get a sore throat and get so exhausted. You do not want to wear out your instrument.
I record videos and podcast episodes nearly every day, and the last thing I want to do is miss three or four days because I hurt my voice.
As you learn to use Dragon Dictate, you will learn how to use voice commands to control your system. You can move the cursor around, open different applications, and start living in the future. You may even replace your mouse with your voice.
But it takes time to learn these processes. One of the first things you can do is learn those awesome voice commands and just focus on using the software for navigation. It’s a great way to speed things up and probably not even a way you considered bringing dictation into your workflow.
Start simple and slowly to bring dictation into your process.
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Add a Cleanup Phase
With dictation and transcription, you’re going to need a cleanup phase. This phase is no joke; that is the biggest lesson from my great dictation experiment. It took me several tries to get a workable draft, and editing this book has taken much longer than any project I've ever worked on in the past.
Whether you clean up your text yourself, have an assistant do it, or find someone to handle the entire transcription process for you, you must add that phase into your workflow. It’s a new phase that we don’t have when typing.
Editing is a primary phase, but with dictation, you need to slip a new step in front of your editing process. This is where you fix any transcription errors and add in all that missing punctuation. Right now I am eighty thousand words into this first draft. And there is not a single period or comma or quotation mark in any of them. Just thinking about all that punctuation sends shivers down my spine.
At first, I thought that the cleanup phase for this book would be easy. I wrongly assumed that it was a labor-intensive task that any English speaker could handle. But I was gravely mistaken. Cleaning up the transcription from Dragon required a great deal of decision-making. Even though the draft had a small percentage of mistakes, they started to add up. There were sentences that I couldn't even begin to guess the meaning. Several times, I had to go back and listen to my audio recording.
As much as I wanted to hire someone else to clean up the document, all my efforts failed. I cleaned up most of this book myself and only for a few chapters I brought in some help. I can honestly say that the cleanup phase is the number one reason this book was delayed. Each day I woke up dreading working on this book. I can't dance around it; this was the greatest failure in my dictation experiment. I had to rewrite this section after that cleanup; all my initial predictions were dead wrong.
In the end, it was cheaper for me to hire someone to transcribe the entire audio than to have someone clean up the file that Dragon gave me. I tried using and editing those versions myself, but I was close to tearing my hair out. This is an experiment, and there are going to be negative results. The cleanup phase was the biggest challenge with this book. I can admit that because we are on this journey together.
Part of my problem is that I can’t control myself. During cleanup, I kept writing more and more content. I love writing and nearly doubled the size of this book. I have this tendency to treat the dictation as an outline.
The cleanup phase is a new hurdle, but I love sitting outside and dictating so much that I will find a way to make it work.
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Get the Equipment
With whichever workflow you choose, the quality of your microphone will affect the quality of your final product. If you use a low-quality microphone, there will be more mistakes in the transcriptions. One of the problems that I had with my initial foray into Dragon was the result of using a low-quality headset.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize it for a while; I blamed my problems on technical glitches. I bought a high-end USB gaming headset, which has amazing audio sound and sterling reviews online. But there was something wrong with the microphone. I don't know if it was just my headset. It's a very popular headset that many people use. They sound fantastic, but whenever I made Skype phone calls, the audio was so garbled that I thought it was a problem with my Internet connection. I spent weeks trying to fix my Internet when this fancy headset was the culprit.
I was testing Dragon at the time, and many of my complaints about the software should instead have been directed at the hardware. I now know that test was poisoned from the start. I didn’t discover the problem until I’d given up on using Dragon. I have since switched microphones, and now my audio comes in like a dream.
Learn from my mistake. Before you make any final decisions about voice-to-text, record and play back some audio from your microphone. If you are going to record in front of the computer, you have two options: you can use a headset or a freestanding microphone. After my headset debacle, I jumped up to a high-end microphone. I have been through many microphones in my career, and you can see my experiments and recommendations on the 20K page.
With a high-quality microphone on an adjustable arm, you will look and feel like you’re in a recording studio or on the radio. With an arm and a pop filter, you will record high-quality sound and filter out a lot of the background noise that can infect your audio. If you set your microphone directly on your desk, which I have done in the past, every time your computer fan turns on there will be some background noise in your recordings. You will get that little hum that is the bane of every audio engineer's existence.
Perhaps you’re not planning on releasing audiobooks or recording voiceovers from your home office, but every little problem has the potential to grow. A little background hum might lower your transcription quality by just one percent. Over time, that can add up to a lot of unnecessary mistakes.
You need a pop filter because, as you're speaking, you will develop more spit in your mouth, and it will start flying out of your mouth into the microphone. That will affect the microphone and the quality of your sound. A pop filter blocks all that. It prevents loud ‘P’ sounds from messing up your recording.
A decent microphone is an investment in your business and worth the cost. However, I’m a big believer in spending from profit, not from debt. You can record your first book using a simple setup and then invest in better equipment from the profits of that book. That can be your reward for doing awesome with your first dictated book!
I have links and pictures on the 20K page of the exact kit that I use. Every microphone I used in my business is made by Rode. I have four of their microphones and will be buying even more in the future. Everything works well, sounds great, and doesn't require an engineering degree. If you decide to use the same microphone as me, make sure you only use a Rode arm to hold your microphone. Rode mics are heavier than most other brands out there, so other arms can't hold them up properly.
Investing in the right setup will make things easier. Once you have the right microphone in place, you never have to think about it again.
If you are going mobile, grab a lapel microphone. You can get away with using the microphone in your phone, but you will have more unnecessary glitches. There are a few great microphones, including the one I use to record most of my podcast episodes listed on my 20K page, and they all cost around fifty bucks. Lapel microphones are a lot cheaper than desktop mics. I am recording this entire book through a Rode SmartLav+ clipped to my shirt right now; I practice what I preach.
238
Prep Your Work
When recording away from your computer, you will probably need two mobile devices. I am sitting on my dock right now with my iPhone and my iPad mini. My notes and outlines are all stored on the iPad while I record into the phone.
I don't want to open the multiple apps on my phone at the same time. Jumping between apps coul
d cause the recording to crash or glitch in some way. It probably won’t happen, but I certainly don’t want to risk it. There’s a ninety-nine percent chance that there won’t be a problem, but I don't like to let in additional risk that I don't need.
You must prepare your notes before you start dictating. No matter the topic or genre, finishing your preparation first is not optional. The more you prepare, the more successful your recording will be. Organize the beats and structure of your story before you plug in the microphone. Without knowing how a scene is going to play out, you can easily wander off topic and take your story down the wrong path. You will break the rhythm of your story.
When you're out in the world dictating, you can't see the words on the screen, so you have no waypoints to track your flow. Without an outline, you will lose track very quickly. You won't see the beats, and your story will go off the rails.
There is a reason that this book started with the sections on preparation rather than jumping straight into dictation. A great writing career is built on a great foundation. Use the 20K Research System to create deep outlines before you dictate.
It is important to prep everything in advance. When I wrote the first section of this book, I hadn't prepared properly. For the first three recording sessions, I rushed outside just to start taking action. I wanted to record right away. I didn't have my iPad mini because there were problems with updating it, and then there were problems with getting the Scrivener file onto the iPad, and then the battery ran out of power.
It was nearly six hours before the iPad was ready, and that caused a bunch of problems. It made everything harder. I got a little bit off topic, and if you read those sections, you might even notice that I drifted a little bit. I'm going to have to do more editing to make up for that.
Prepping your outline and your technology is all part of the process. It's very hard to remember all of your little notes if you don't have them with you.
Prepare your notes and a way to use them while you dictate and you will be off to the races.
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Find Your Voice
You now know the tools and techniques that I use in my workflow. We're all different, so I want to reiterate this again: Test, test, test! Experiment with different workflows. Experiment with dictating directly to the computer and into your phone. Experiment with sitting in one location or walking around. Try dictating in the car or the bathroom.
As you try different things, you will discover what works for you. You might be amazing at dictating outlines and terrible at dictating dialogue scenes. That's OK. We want to learn that. Use dictation as a supplement to speed up different parts of your workflow. If it slows you down or decreases your speed in different areas, then don't use it in that area. I don't use dictation when editing because it would slow me down massively.
We are experimenting together. I'm dictating my first book to you in real time, and I'm recording notes about the dictation process on my website. Every day, I add notes to my mini-blog on the 20K page so you can go and see what my experience was like. In case different parts get edited out of this recording, I am creating a permanent record. You can see what I went through and what my process was like. I know that experiencing things together is helpful, and I want to lead by example.
I'm experimenting with a new workflow, and so far, I'm very pleased with it, but I still have to make adjustments to my cleanup phase. When dictating, I can’t edit or fix any mistakes in the moment, so I have a lot of extra work in my cleanup phase. That will certainly change my workflow.
Try different things and see what works for you. Try writing sprints with dictation. You may find that you can do a twenty-five-minute dictation and then your throat hurts.
Right now, I’m at the end of approximately one hour of recording, and my throat is starting to hurt. It's starting to feel a little bit tired. So I know that this is the final recording of this session. I'm not going to push myself. I'm not going to force myself to do ten more minutes.
I never push my body because it's not worth it. I don't want to get a sore throat. If I get a sore throat, canker sore, scratchy feeling, or any dryness, I know it's time to stop immediately. If I push myself now, I won't be able to work as effectively during my next session.
I'm going to record again later today; maybe I will record twice. I don't know; I can’t predict the future. I’ll see if I can do a full two and a half or even three hours of recording in a single day.
Knowing your limitations is very important, and you only find them through experimentation. I want to show you as many options as possible for designing your workflow so that we discover the one that's perfect for you.
If you reply to any of my emails with questions about developing your workflow, I will respond to you personally and help you figure things out one-on-one. You’re a member of my tribe now, and I have an obligation to help you succeed.
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Dragon Tips
Improving with Dragon Dictate is possible. With any software, there is going to be a learning curve. With dictation software, there are two different curves. First, you have to learn how to operate and control the software, how to give commands, and how to add unique words to your dictionary.
Secondly, Dragon needs to learn your voice. The more you work together, the better the software operates. It will take time to develop your “talking to a computer” voice. Most of us have seen so many movies with people talking to machines that we naturally go into a special way of talking. We might look toward the ceiling or talk slower. All because we see this on television.
“Hello, computer. Please open email.”
I bet that sounds weird even in your head. It certainly does in mine. It will take a while to overcome your tendency to talk to your computer with a special voice.
When we do this, we are trying to speak in a way that we think the computer will understand, but it tends to decrease the accuracy of the software. It makes it weirder because we're not speaking naturally.
When you first get the software, you'll notice that it allows you to create different profiles. I have a different profile for each different type of task. When I’m dictating, I have a set of profiles. I have different profiles for transcribing and each different microphone setup.
The computer can recognize that my voice sounds different with each microphone. When I use the little microphone in my laptop, my voice has a bit of echo and sounds more distant. It used to take days to train dictation software, but now it only takes a few minutes to get started.
It’s very tempting to bypass the training and get the software going as fast as you can. I’m one of those people that never reads the manual. But now I have to go back and train the software properly to improve its accuracy.
Don’t repeat my mistakes; learn from them. The software is technical in some ways; it does take time to learn all the voice commands. The training is the only path to becoming a dictation power user. If other people use the same computer, make sure that they have discrete profiles. Mingling two voices in one profile will cause problems.
Sometimes I use Dragon Dictate to transcribe a video I’m researching. It saves me a lot of time when I convert that video into text. For each new voice I create a new profile. I don’t want my computer to learn from a different voice and start applying that to my transcriptions. You may need to create a different profile for each location where you like to work. If a room has more echo or more background noise, you will have to adapt.
Create a different profile for each microphone and location combination. I sound different recording on my microphone out here on my dock than I do inside the house or even sitting on the porch. For each location, there is a different background noise profile. In my bedroom, I have to deal with noise from the water cooler, the air conditioner, the fan, and my kids. All those sounds affect each of my recordings.
When I record on the porch, people are talking nearby all the time. Loud motorcycles zoom by every few minutes. These noises are the pric
e of living in paradise, and they affect each recording differently.
Out here on my dock, the ocean has a mind of its own. The tide is an unstoppable force, and sometimes the waves start crashing so loudly that I have to flee.
The best way to prepare for the challenges of your “noise life” is to get the best microphone for your budget. Starting with a lapel microphone is fine because you can then work anywhere. They are designed to focus on the closest voice and are better at filtering out background noise than many expensive microphones.
Set up your audio so that your voice in the recording is loud, but doesn’t peak. A peak is where the audio image is bigger than the graph. On most devices, this will show a red light to warn that your voice is too loud and the sound will be distorted. You want the volume meter to go up near the yellow zone, but never into red. This means that your voice is not too quiet and not too loud.
If your voice is too low, you can modify the gain on your microphone to make your voice louder. There are screenshots and demonstrations for getting the perfect microphone setup on the 20K page. Setting up your microphone correctly will save you from a lot of headaches down the line. If I had tested my setup properly with that gaming headset, I would never have blamed the Internet for all those audio problems.
20K a Day: How to Launch More Books and Make More Money Page 27