The Journal, Tuesday, January 30

Hey Folks,

I meant to post this yesterday. I really did, but there wasn’t a lot to talk about. Mostly I worked on the copyedit yesterday, as I will today and tomorrow, and took care of a few household chores.

***

Well, the hits keep on coming. On the tail of losing a paternal uncle a few weeks ago, yesterday I lost another one. I am now officially the Old Man of the Stanbrough clan.

Clifford Jerry Stanbrough was a tin-can (destroyer) sailor, a gunner’s mate, in the early 1950s. After that, he enjoyed a long career as a photographer, working with Lockheed-Martin before eventually retiring and going to work for his local police department as their photographer.

Cliff was also an excellent guitarist who taught me to play. His friends included the likes of Lefty Frizzell, Web Pierce and others. Bill Mauldin, who later became the cartoonnist famous for Willie & Joe, was a childhood friend of Cliff and a few other paternal and maternal uncles. Cliff was a force of nature, always with a joke on his lips and a ready laugh. We will miss him.

***

Every so often, I read another article about how and why I should learn to dictate my stories and novels. According to its proponents, dictation, once learned, greatly enhances a writer’s productivity, miraculously adds 4 to 6 hours of free time to the average 24-hour day, a quite possibly is a cure for the common cold.

I bought a good hand-held voice recorder back about the time MP3 files were first becoming a thing. Ten years ago? Fifteen? I set out to talk my stories while I was walking. Problem was, I didn’t know what to say.

Over the years, each time I encountered another article regarding this miracle cure for various writers’ maladies, I tried again, most often with the same results. Yesterday was no exception.

After reading the article in “Of Interest” below, again I pulled out my VR, dusted it off and made ready flash past my usual productivity.

Then I remembered I would need a way to turn the recording into text. 1) There are no free ways, other than manual transcription. 2) There is no guarantee that even the $300 Dragon program will render the text as-spoken.

Oh. Well, okay then.

I’ll still plan to carry my VR with me when I start walking again. If nothing else, at least it will be there Just In Case a story springs upon me in mid-step. I’ll let you know how it works out.

With only one day left in January, and with the copyedit I’m working on nearing completion, and having almost extracted myself from this flu-thing, and with a trip to NM imminent, it will be a few days before I get back to fiction. See you then.

Of Interest

See “How To Use Dictation For A Healthier Writing Life” at https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2018/01/10/healthy-writer-dictation-tips/. Have you ever tried writing via dictation? What did you think?

See “The Indie Publishing Lesson” at https://kriswrites.com/2018/01/24/business-musings-the-indie-publishing-lesson-2017-in-review/.

Fiction Words: XXXX
Nonfiction Words: 500 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 500

Writing of (working title)

Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX

Total fiction words for the month……… 38156
Total fiction words for the year………… 38156
Total nonfiction words for the month… 8020
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 8020
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 46176

Calendar Year 2018 Novels to Date………………………… 1
Calenday Year 2018 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
Calendar Year 2018 Short Stories to Date……… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 28
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 4
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………………… 182