M. Platt Sean - 15-Minute Dictation: More Books, Less Frustration.

It took me a decade to finally figure out dictation.

It's my hope that youll have it nailed by the end of this book.

Ten years ago I read a post on ProBlogger by a guy named Jon Morrow. Hes a friend now, but I didnt know him then. Jon is one of the most inspiring humans Ive ever met. He was inspiring me to think and behave differently from the first time I saw his name online.

Jon would later change my life by introducing me to my good friend Lori, but back then I was just fascinated with his treatise on dictation.

I need a moment to tell you how amazing Jon is. Born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, hes spent the majority of his adult life almost entirely paralyzed. He can move his eyes and lips, which enables him to write with dictation. Jon is one of the world best copywriters and a wheelchair millionaire. He doesn't just run his very successful business on words, he runs it by way of dictation.

I was fascinated. Im highly verbal, and quickly convinced myself after reading that article that if I were to spend some time learning to properly dictate, I would be able to produce many multiples more words than I already was at the time. It wasnt fiction yet. Back then it was all blog posts and SEO articles, but my income was still very much attached to speed, and because I didn't care about the overall quality of most of the keyword articles I was writing (who can blame me, and I still cared more than most), I thought dictation might be like having the Konami cheat code.

But my results were miserable.

Ten years ago the only dictation software worth anything for Mac was MacSpeech, and it might not have been total garbage, but my ability to use it was.

The software was beyond frustrating, and I hated every minute of our time together. While reading Jons article I had imagined how freeing it would be to just talk and talk and talk, then give my words a light edit before posting. But it was nothing like that. I didn't realize that Id have to speak all of the punctuation and necessary commands.

Period.

New line.

Open quote.

Closed parentheses.

New line.

All caps.

Etc. It drove me nuts and flow felt impossible. Definitely not worth the effort considering how fast I could already type. So I gave up for a couple of years, then eventually found myself trying it annually.

Nuance, the company that made the Dragon software for PC, bought MacSpeech and Dragon ported over.

The allure was strong. I kept trying the same thing over and over and over again even though I was never getting different results. Each year the technology would be supposedly better than the year before, and that was enough to get me clicking on the overpriced tool from a company I cant stand.

My friends all know how much I loathe Nuance. Its one of my three most hated companies. A distinction earned by having one-hundred percent of my interactions with them being somehow negative, and my intolerance for predatory companies who place profits so blatantly in front of their customers.

Yet I still gave them my money every single year.

How could I not? Cracking this nut would change my writing business forever, once I could finally do it. Id be able to fit more words in, arranging them into my day like that perfect falling block in a game of Tetris, productivity at the ideal time and place, neatly sliding into my flow wherever I needed it most.

Fifteen minutes of effective dictation can yield a few hundred words, and it would be easy to stack those sprints throughout my day, I kept telling myself.

And yet I failed every time.

Until late last year when I finally got it. Now dictation is an essential part of my workflow. A daily practice, and a secret key to unlocking more of my storytelling self that Im thrilled to share with you now.

Dictation is more popular than it used to be. I kept seeing a growing number of my fellow storytellers nailing it, both inside and outside of our studio. Joel tried but didnt like it, and neither Johnny nor Dave can ever imagine writing fiction that way. But for Vered and Ben its become the primary way they write.

I was dying to try it and really make it stick for once. So I finally had to ask myself what the problem was why did I keep tripping up over and over and over?

It was obviously a mental block, so unplugging from my regular patterns of thought was the first order of business. After thinking on it for a while I finally had to laugh at how simple and obvious the answer was. Were lucky to live in a time when we can say words out loud and watch as they appear on the screen in front of us. Im still getting used to it, and in a way this will always feel like magic for me.

Not so for my children.

And that got me thinking

If I had learned to tell stories that way from the start, by speaking it instead of typing it out on a keyboard, wouldnt dictation feel like a much more natural way to do it? Humans have been communicating verbally for tens of thousands of years, weve only been writing for a thin sliver of that time.

The keyboard is an implement standing between our ideas and our execution. Dictation draws the relationship between story and thought that much closer.

Once I understood that, the next part came easier, even as hard as it still was.

I had to build the muscle. I always ditched dictation by the third day because I found the experience so severely uncomfortable. Yes, every year I would buy the expensive software from a company I hate all over again, only to abandon it after a few days, feeling bad about myself for more than a couple of reasons.

This time had to be different. So I used my secret weapon of streaks to reinforce the habit (more on streaks later). After looking back through my history to see that the longest dictation streak Id managed in all of my tracking was three days, I finally realized what was already obvious deep in my heart.

The problem with dictation was a hundred percent me.

It took four more tries, but eventually I made it ten days in a row.

I havent stopped since. At the time of this writing Ive finished three books, a couple of short stories, and a lot of thoughts to myself.

I know exactly how scary it is to start.

Youre probably worried about how stupid you might sound talking rather than writing.

You probably hate the idea of articulating punctuation.

You probably think your accent is the one that will be indecipherable to dictation tools.

You almost certainly think you will tell a better story through typing then talking.

I understand. I hated all of that, and more than most things. I talk too fast and mumble half the time. My dictation is in public because I always do it while walking the neighborhood. Your reluctance makes sense, but I promise the other side of the struggle is rainbows and roses.