iPod owners all eventually become subject to a pronoid form of apophenia, in which they become convinced that that the shuffle-play feature can read their minds.
Speech-recognition software users all eventually become subject to the paranoid version of this, in which they become convinced that the software is mocking them.
My father auditioned an early (1992-ish) cut of speech-recognition software intended for medical-transcription use. Whenever witnesses were present, the software interjected the word ‘testicle’ at least once every ten words. When witnesses were absent, this behavior completely disappeared. We eventually had to purge the word ‘testicle’ from the dictionary. Thereafter, if the dictation at hand required use of that particular word, the user was forced to spell it.
The software has improved immeasurably since then, but the curse has not lifted entirely. I have felt the clouds gathering for several days, and I quit today’s dictation session early when I spoke the words ‘pulled taut’ into the headset and the words ‘Pol Pot’ appeared on the monitor.
If mine were a more rational mind, I would doubtless ignore errors like these as statistical anomalies. But I am an engineer, and thus an implicit believer in black magic.
In the middle of writing today’s second scene, I found myself staring out the window a little too long, so I went and put on my usual mismatched pair of beat-up running shoes and went out to till up a section of the back lawn for the girls to use as a garden plot. It’s at least several weeks too late to be starting a garden, but we’ve been suffering from horrible rototiller karma all spring (broken rototillers, immovably-huge rototillers, friends who almost lent us rototillers…) and the girls really want to put seeds (or leggy marigolds from the trays on display outside the supermarket) in the ground. So: Breaking up sod with a rototiller. When I got back from that, I found a comment on yesterday’s post from pilgrimtinker asking me to post the troll story. I’ll be happy to do that, although it will expose you to my pitifully-small word-counts, continuity problems and other early-draft ugliness. I went back and took a look at the current state of the first troll story scene, and it needs work before I’m willing to expose it, so that goes on the docket for tomorrow: Draft two and a half Pismo scenes, clean up troll scene, post troll scene.
On the plus side, I opened up yesterday’s Amazon package containing an inexpensive Bluetooth headset recommended by the Dragon people: blueparrot Bluetooth VXI Roadwarrior B150 Wireless Headset. “Proven by truck drivers in noisy environments. Blocks engine, wind & other background noises.” I have been trying to psych myself up to cutting out the longhand step and drafting directly by voice. But draftin’ while truckin’? That’s for me.
The good news: I wrote the first two scenes of the Pismo story today.
The bad news: I only wrote the first two scenes of the Pismo story today. There are fifty-six scenes in the outline and thirty days in June. That means I need to write an average of two scenes a day. Two scenes today: I haven’t banked any scenes for busier days to come.
The first scene was easy. I had already given it a lot of thought. The second was maddening. In my outline, I had written, “Exposition: describe the restaurant,” which wasn’t nearly enough meat for an entire scene. A sentence, maybe. I spent half an hour or so writing elaborate curses to myself until I invented enough business to build a scene around. I imagine that will happen a lot. Some of my outline notes are easy to write to; others not so much.
I also transcribed a few scenes from the longhand draft of the troll story using Dragon Naturally Speaking, which worked incredibly well. I used an earlier version of the software in the mid-1990’s to transcribe a book’s worth of interviews when tendinitis kept me from typing. Ten years seem to have brought lots of speed and accuracy improvements. Typing my longhand drafts is a chore. Dictating seems to take most of the sting out of it.