After starting my scene on a rainy day yesterday that forced me to stay inside and type on my phone, today I continued it while walking and dictating. I think I was able to make the transition well enough.
It helped having the previous text on my phone so that I could quickly read through the outline again and the last few lines to know where I should pick up, so the start was relatively easy. However, I didn’t finish the scene today, either, and one of the trickiest things for me has been to pick up on a half-dictated scene and continue it either by dictating again or by typing. Since my computer is down and I can’t transcribe the words, I can’t see where I was.
I tried to overcome that today by taking down a few lines of notes after I finished the dictation to give myself an idea of where I was in the scene. Tomorrow, I’ll find out if that was good enough allow me to keep going.
In terms of dictating progress, it’s still a slog. Unlike when I’m typing, I still have never gotten into a flow state even once. I find myself grinding to a stop after every sentence, or sometimes in the middle of them, trying to figure out how to phrase the next sentence. I think this is just a skill that I have to develop, but so far I do not seem to be making much progress. Maybe it would help if I were to dictate while sitting still so that I can close my eyes and picture the scene. That might help the flow. But at the same time, one of the appeals of dictation for me is the ability to do it while I’m walking – and one of the requirements for doing it at 5 in the morning is that I need to be outside so that I don’t wake the kids!
Any tips on how to get used to this would be very much appreciated.