slowly understood by machines

My speech pattern is consciously different when I'm talking to my car. Whether I'm on a hands-free phone call or asking the car to do something via the little Linguatronic button, I tend to speak slightly louder and for the car's system I also have.a.more.clipped.style. [NAVIGATION ON. DESTINATION HOME.]

It's the same this year for NaNoWriMo. I've been experimenting with a small dictation machine that came as part of a recent software update - a thing called Voice Tracer which is simply a digital recorder which can plug into the computer to offload the dictations. It has a speech start/stop feature too, so if I stop talking then the recording will stop until I start again. I notice the memory of the unit says its good for 49 days, although I expect the battery would run out before I reached that landmark.

I know that the iPhone has a recorder too, and my one probably has at least 3 recording type apps, but there is a simplicity to the single-purpose device which is quite appealing.

The connection to the USB works well too, straight into Dragon Dictate, which has a transcribe facility that takes my spoken words and with surprisingly few mistakes converts them into text. There's probably less typos than I make as well. I didn't even really teach this latest version of Dragon any of my speech either, so it must have clever processing. I tend to make 20-30 minute recordings, which take a few minutes each time to convert into pretty decently interpreted text.

It's another situation where I speak...slowly...when...I'm dictating. There's two reasons for this: I have to think about what I'm trying to put into the story and also to decide whether to use the ability to add in punctuation automatically. FULL STOP. NEW LINE. NEW LINE.

I'm not so good at those punctuation controls, and although I could use the same dictation directly into the computer (without the recorder, but with on-screen prompts), there's something about being able to get away from the screen completely. Some people will be using typewriters, pencils and paper, or glass writing pens with multi-coloured inks for their NaNoWriMo attempts.

I can understand that it's also about reducing the distractions from the technology. I'm hoping my own 'speak the story out loud' technique will work just as well.

time portal discovered in London?

I decided to try to get a bit ahead on that novel writing month thing because of work next week. It's made the last couple of days a little bit strange, but as I was a bit cold-ified in any case it meant I could blend Lem-Sip with typing.

I've even printed a google map of the route my characters are taking around part of America in my story. It bears an uncanny resemblance to some of the places I visited a while ago, which will help when I need to fill in some detail later on.

At the moment I'm trying to get the main chunks of plot blocked out and conveniently the characters are all being most helpful in directing the way to solve problems.

So I haven't had to spend time discovering time portals in London or anything similarly improbable to keep on track. And I'm secretly rather pleased that I've managed to get somewhat ahead of the targets.

Although I'm equally sure that when I eventually look back over what I've been doing, there will be some major remediation required.

But so far the need for a time portal lies dormant.

it landed outside City Hall #nanowrimo #nanolondon

I know, it looks like a ready made plot line, but it's not the one for me this year.

I've decided to hang in there with the desert caper which I originally considered for NaNoWriMo a year ago. Not that I did any work on it at the time though.

It didn't make sense for me to attempt it last time and I used the time instead to re-edit some of the work I'd produced previously. There was no point in counting the words at that time, so I quietly dropped out of the NaNoWriMo system after about a day.

This time I have started with a completely blank sheet of paper and a stuttery beginning, but now the story is up and running I can see some of the ways to drive it along.

I'm using the most basic structure ideas based around setup/initial problem/bigger problem/biggest problem/resolution/finale this time and trying to drive out the plot more than the descriptions of weather systems. As was the case the last time I wrote something, the characters all have minds of their own again.

I've genuinely surprised myself so far. Although it may be limping along with a need for many running repairs (like when I changed a character name part way through), it does seem to be stacking up word count.

Because of work commitments I've decided to blitz this first weekend to get as far ahead as I can because of the inevitable slow down as real world kicks in on Monday.

Literary masters may scorn the rapid creation approach, but I think it helps to get the creativity running and I know the subsequent edits may overturn some sizeable chunks of the initial piece. I think Hemingway had a famous quote about first drafts.

And if anyone else is seeking inspiration and wants to borrow the scene from my photograph...well I took it last week and the 'Thing' is still there - right next to London's City Hall.

aspidistras, anyone?

What was I thinking yesterday? Staying in to watch shabbily constructed television? Writing an almost negative post? There must have been a temporary fault in my reality. Maybe its because I was abandoned yesterday evening whilst others took a sports car downtown for merriment.

Far more positively, alongside my lone rainy foot expedition to the Tandoori, through 90mph horizontal car-wash storms, I also completed a private project and have bundled it all off for its next stage in Germany. That's alongside the work project which is in its last stages too.

I also somehow clocked another couple of chapters for "The Square", although it seems to be accomplished in rather small units of time this year. Not quite Gordon Comstock, but parts of it have appeared whilst hanging around at bus-stops. The last piece I wrote featured the upper deck of a 137, so it is all getting a little weird.

I'll figure out how to knit it together. Once I've found a use for the secret underground elevator.