I started using dictation in my work about two years ago. In March 2022, I watched a deep dive in the McSparky Labs, during which David Sparks explained how he uses dictation in much of his work.
When I first started using dictation, I felt very awkward. I felt self-conscious talking to a microphone or a computer. But over time, I’ve become much more comfortable with it. Now, I typically use AirPods to speak for comfort and better voice quality.
Recently, I started using the Whisper Memos dictation app. It’s been a game-changer for me. Using Whisper Memos, I’m doing much more dictation. I use it every morning to journal in the Day One app in response to my prompt, “What’s on your mind?”
One of the reasons I like using Whisper Memos is that it handles paragraphing very well. Many of the AI-assisted dictation apps don’t divide text into paragraphs. Then, I have to go into the text and edit the paragraphs. However, Whisper Memos creates paragraphs. In most cases, it does so well I don’t have to edit the paragraph divisions.
The other thing I really like about using Whisper Memos is that the transcription is not visible on the screen while I’m speaking. When I use the built-in Apple dictation, the transcription appears as I speak. I was constantly dividing my attention, watching it to ensure that nothing had gone wrong, and not giving my full attention to what I was saying.
The transcription is not visible with Whisper Memos because my voice recording is uploaded to the web. The transcribing takes place in the cloud and returns a transcription to me. So, I’m not dividing my attention between watching the transcription and speaking. Instead, I can focus on just talking.
Dictating My Blog Post First Draft Has Multiple Benefits
About a month ago, I started dictating a first draft of my blog post. Before then, I typically used a shortcut to record a blog post idea with some initial comments. Then, when I decided to publish a post on the topic, I began a mind map in the MindNode app. I’d revisit it over several days to add and cut material and rearrange the mind map.
When I was ready to write my first draft, I’d sit down with the Ulysses app on the left side of the computer screen, and my mind map on the right. My job was to turn the mind map outline into narrative text. Then, I’d make multiple edits on that first draft. Usually, I would write a post at least a week before publishing it.
I’ve found that dictating my initial draft text from my mind map has several benefits.
1. First, it speeds up the process Speaking is much faster than writing. It usually takes me less than 15 minutes to dictate a post. Editing the first draft is about an hour and a half to an hour faster than when I drafted the initial text by hand. So, it saves me about one hour to produce a first draft.
2. It makes my first draft much more conversational instead of formal. It reveals more of me and helps me define my writing style. Dictation is helping me to find my voice as a writer.
Even though a mind map guides my dictation, my language is more natural, and I discover different ways to communicate as I speak. Others have told me that my writing seems more straightforward and “sounds like I’m talking to them.”
I’ve noticed this effect in David Sparks’ writings in his blog. Often, his personality shows through, and it’s due, I understand, to his extensive use of dictation. Sometimes, he’ll talk about an app or process he’s using and say, “I’m digging it.” He’s a jazz musician, so this beatnik-type language is likely from that influence. That’s a bit of his background and personality in his writing. I like it; it’s much more personable.
3. It lowers the resistance of writing a first draft. I’m not starting from scratch with a blank page. I’m starting with text on the page, making it much easier mentally to sit down and produce that first draft.
Attempting To Separate Creation from Editing
Last Saturday, I spoke with my friend Scott Loftesness about my process of producing a blog post. Subsequently, he published a blog post reflecting on my process.
He’d read a highlight from Kevin Kelly’s book Excellent Advice for Living, in which Kelly says we ought to separate the process of creating from improving. He wrote, “Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can’t write and edit or sculpt and polish or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment.”
Frankly, I don’t entirely agree with Kevin Kelly’s quote. He makes it sound like it’s possible to divide the creative and improvement functions from each other clearly and that they operate independently. I don’t think it’s quite that clean a process. In my process, the writing, sculpting, editing, and polishing are so intertwined that it’s often difficult to separate the two.
The bulk of Scott’s blog post results from asking his AI tool to draft a blog post, applying Kelly’s quote to my process, and then editing the draft. The post seems to attempt to divide my process steps into the mutually exclusive categories of creation and improvement. For example, it asserts that “Dictation then provides a rapid and unfiltered avenue for expressing our matured thoughts,” thus placing it in the creative category.
I don’t see dictation as all creation since it’s primarily formed by the mind map, which is both creation and editing or improvement. And dictation itself is not an “unfiltered avenue.” I am, in fact, filtering what I say as I speak it. I’m editing my thoughts as I translate them into spoken words and sentences.
Editing can also be creation. I can think of a new idea, write it down, then immediately edit it. I may even make improvements as I’m in the process of writing or recording a new thought. So I’m creating and editing at virtually the same time. Not all activities fall into one category or the other as cleanly as Kelly’s quote seems to indicate.
I see the creative process as more of a continuous interplay, back and forth, sometimes almost simultaneously, between the muse and the scribe, using the terms Anne Janzer discussed in her book, The Writer’s Process.
Give Dictation a Try
Dictation can significantly enhance the creative process. It accelerates the process, making writing more conversational while reducing resistance.
Experiment with dictation to discover its potential benefits for your writing. You can use it to produce first drafts of emails, texts, blog posts, any kind of writing that you do.