Tag Archives: Personal Writing

Speech to Text… Take Three

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I grabbed a new tool. I set it up and tested it out on the drive home. I thought about just posting the raw words, but it’s a rambling mess. What I did get though, was around 1,800 words of raw, rambling mess – so this looks like it might help me keep moving posts like this forward more efficiently. There will be some edit needs, but this might actually work this time.

So here we go for test number three! I tried out a different app yesterday, rambled on mercilessly for probably 15 or 20 minutes. When I went back to look at the text from that particular app – it had stopped recording as soon as the screen shut off. That rambling mess –  almost all of it went away. I hope to get the little piece of that posted in the near future. That’s  the point of this. I want to be able to put together some thoughts in a more timely manner get things out for blog posts. Move things forward. There are a lot of times when the moment I sit down and I think to myself, “Okay, here it is. I’m going to… I’m going to write!” and I end up knocking out a blog post when what I should be doing is working on one of my stories.

That was as far as I got before this thing errored out.

I think that’s going to be a big problem. I’m trying to do this while I’m driving. It allows me to use the drive time usefully.

This thing has errored out like twice while I’m driving and that’s really sort of the point. It needs to be working while I’m driving. I need to not pay attention to the app and focus on driving. That is the primary thing I should be doing. The app should allow me to use my drive time in a more productive manner.

I mentioned the drive time to a friend at a convention recently and he suggested it. He suggested a different app, but that different app uses AI. I don’t know if this one uses AI or not cuz maybe it doesn’t. I will check it out. I am not a fan of using AI. I had a whole rambling thing about AI yesterday and I hope that this one doesn’t go away. If I see the error message pop up out of the corner of my eye I’ll just stop and then we’ll come back to it later. Until then I’ll just keep going.

So – drive time. I want to use this drive time productively. I want to use it for getting thoughts out. Stuff that I can use for quick edits to send into a blog post. If I can get the blog post put together quickly, that saves me time. I do want blogging to be a thing that I continue to do. I do want to continue. I’ve done it for years, but have fallen off a lot after recent events. I’ll start working on stuff and fall off because time, then I’ll start working on stuff again. I put forth a lot of effort in just starting and stopping. I’m throwing opinions out there and keeping the ‘publicity’ going, but what I should be doing is writing more of my stories. I need to get my work out there, so we’re going to start with the blog post and see if I can move forward faster. 

Moving to the stories as far as using this speech to text thing won’t be as easy. The first thing that I noticed after yesterday’s attempt is that speaking for number of minutes continuously not an easy thing. Particularly if it’s on scripted. I was all over the place. I was throwing thoughts at this thing yesterday from all over. I should probably be thankful most of it was lost, but even today I can tell already – this is going to be super stream of consciousness.

 I don’t know, or I haven’t quite figured that part out yet. The most important thing is to make sure it works first. I will just chatter on as I’m on my drive home and we’ll see when we come up. The app says ‘unlimited length’ for posts and I’ll put it to the test.

Another part is I want to be traveling with purpose. So many topics have slid past just based on my ability to get to the computer and type. I want what I have to say to have some kind of meaning as well. I say that because I’ve discovered that I’m still very upset about something that happened (many years ago) with a local news source. I went on a rant yesterday about this and I got caught up calling it a newspaper and describing a blog in column inches… it wasn’t great. The incident was that this news source had a columnist that they paid – yes, an actual live human – and actual live human was in a columnist position getting paid and you are potentially blocking somebody else out of that position doing actual work. What bothered me? This individual went on at length saying, “well… I’ve got nothing.”

I was angry then and I’m still annoyed now. IF you don’t have anything to say anymore, get out of the way! That person got paid! It just… it bothered me. I saw a story recently that said she was still that person until she recently retired. I shouldn’t be so upset about it. I suppose that’s pretty much any channel these days. If you turn on any media source there are a whole lot of people with nothing to say.

Having this time should help me add words.I did some rough math in my head. Even if I’m only throwing down… keep it to round numbers here… I manage a thousand words three times per week when I’m driving back from the office. That’s 3,000 words that I didn’t have before. 3,000 words a week for a month, there’s another 12,000. Hopefully keeping things moving. Trying to do the math in my head that’s like 72,000 words or so in half a year. A pretty good chunk of a novel right there. With edits and formatting, I think I could put together a book in a year. That’s if it’s only the words that I use while I’m using the speech to text. That sort of thing is a huge boost, so fingers crossed. 

Doing this will mean, vocal chords warming up. It takes effort, it takes time, and if I’m going to do anything with a story I can’t just off the cuff throw Story Stuff down like this and have it be successful. Side note – talking about hundreds or thousands of words is great, but that’s if they’re good words. There’s no guarantee that the words will be worthwhile at all. There’s the very real chance that it’ll be half that amount just because most of it, the majority of it is simply garbage. I’ll be interested to see how that was typed. I pronounced garbage with a bit of an accent. A person who’s speaking doesn’t always translate directly to text. What you’re saying, the emphasis, the hesitations… those sorts of things don’t automatically come through.

I have always struggled with moving a story told to the written word. I think that’s part of the explanation of why my writing is so slow. If I’m talking to somebody and we’re having a conversation and I have emphasis and I have sound effects and accent and I can tell a really good story. That doesn’t always translate directly to text. While I may be a decent storyteller that doesn’t make me a good writer. It’s a really hard thing to translate from one to the other.

So I’m testing out my stream of Consciousness here to see how it looks, how it works. I’m certain that I repeated myself probably three or four times within the context of the last 10 or 15 minutes but that’s the other piece of this. When you don’t have a plan, when you don’t have an outline, when you don’t have a goal in mind, then you just go you ramble and sometimes you get repetitive and sometimes end up with the similar word creeping into your text over and over and over again. I might need to find and replace, or just a word search in general to find that word that you’ve used again and again and amusingly enough again should probably be one of those words.

Having said all of that before this, I do intend to research whether or not this tool uses AI. Part of that is I am not a fan of AI. My background in science fiction has shown AI as the bad guy so much, for so long, it’s difficult to escape from that mindset for me. I have a minimal understanding of large language model training and that sort of thing. It’s certainly not enough to say I understand it. All I could really say is that I’m vaguely conversational about it. It’s emotional for me. It’s the feeling portion of it I’m not comfortable with. If I don’t feel comfortable with it then I’m not going to want to use it. There’s also a part of me that wants to do the background research because all of the news lately shows the amount of resources that AI is consuming in terms of power and computer chips and water resources. All of that sort of thing along with the massive number of data centers that are being put forward in planning processes right now… that feels like the sort of thing that could very easily get out of hand. Far too easy using it and not being aware of how it’s going to affect our environment.

For my purposes, tools that I have seen so far that companies have put forward for AI do a lot of things very poorly, very quickly. I can get you a lot of wrong answers in a heartbeat. If we are going to depend on them then we definitely want to make sure that we are prepared. Correct answers for things that we want to be able to have a level of confidence in. When we say “AI did this and I’m pretty sure it’s correct” it’s not always enough. I don’t want to say “hey AI did this and I never checked it out” and then find out at some point later it absolutely didn’t work, was wrong, and now the stuff that I’m working with is wrong and that, that really bothers me. Do I think AI is going away? Absolutely not. There are too many companies that have invested too much money. They’re putting AI in places that it absolutely does not belong. Eventually the market will find an appropriate level and straighten itself out. When we know the appropriate tools, the appropriate use cases of those tools, then we can deal with it. It does NOT need to be in everything. In fact it bothers me that it has been forced into my email account already. I don’t want it there. I don’t need it there. I don’t need some computer telling me ‘hey I can help you write that better’. No, you really can’t. You’re going to use generic terminology that doesn’t fit my voice. My stories, my voice. That matters. Not enough people get that.

There it is. My massive, rambly, on my way home piece. I am now actually within probably 5 or 10 minutes of the house and I have just let all of this go~

And it errored out again. A fine point to wrap up at.

Far more editing time than I wanted (close to an hour). More words than I thought (final count just over 1,900). A successful test. More rambly words to follow!

Tool Testing

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I recently changed firms at my day job. The new place is a much further drive than I have had in some time.

I was talking with a friend about my current place of employment that I when I have to go to the office, I need to drive more than I have in a long time. It seems to be a real waste of time. To have this 45 minute period each way that I can’t really do anything with is wasteful. To be fair, I have listened to more news and more music, but there are days when I need more time and that seemed like a usable spot. He suggested that what I needed was a way to talk to notes – use a voice to text transcription tool of some sort. I could use that time driving productively by taking notes from my train of thought, then quickly editing the notes so that I could keep my stories and my blog moving along at a better pace.

Even if I only got a few hundred words, that would be a few hundred more than I had before.

This is not the fist time I’ve tried a tool like this – but this is the first time I’ve had specific time when I couldn’t do other things, or type at all. This was my first attempt with an app called Voice Notebook.

As with any voice to text app I’ve encountered in the past, the editing it the real challenge. I have managed to move the notes to a cloud drive and clean them up. We’ll see how this goes when I need to use it in the car (I cheated and tested this one while I was sitting at my desk in the office).

An Anniversary

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Today, the 28th of December, is the anniversary of The Pretend Blog. No, it wasn’t always on my own website – it took time to reach that level of understanding and commitment. I’m sure the Live Journal stuff is still out there, I’m just not sure who owns it now and that’s part of why I moved to my own site.


I’ve been writing here and posting whatever I feel like for years now. As I said at the very start, I do this because it’s a thing I want, not a thing that is required in some way. I try to post things on the regular, but that has never been my strong suit. My writing is mercurial and moody on a good day. That’s one of the biggest reasons why I don’t believe I could make it as a freelance writer. I’ve gone weeks without the ‘mood’ moving me to write. That’s fine when the day job fills that space and a paycheck still comes in. Not so good when getting said paycheck means slapping words onto a page… or piling up some pixels.

The Pretend Blog is going to continue. I intend to maintain it as long as I am able. I want there to be a place that is controlled by me. What I post here is mine. No, I still don’t know anything about making my web spot fancy. Yes, the colors should be better and an actual graphic artist should have done my site picture… but that’s just it. What is here is mine. My good stuff, my ugly stuff, all of it.

I’m hoping to have a more consistent presence here, but I’ve said that in the past and it hasn’t happened. I need to be real with myself and just keep posting as I go and putting the things I want up here. Yes, some of the things will age well. No, some of what’s up here won’t age well. People can grow and change and become better than they were. For better or worse, I’m going to continue to pretend people read my blog.

Getting Away

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I absolutely recommend taking whatever chances you can to go someplace new. Travel, see things, meet people and experience what a new place has to offer. I understand the trip my family took isn’t something everyone could afford to do, but this applies to any sort of travel. IF you have the chance, go.

We’ve taken two trips recently – both of them out of the country.

Our first trip was thanks to dear friends who invited us along to Niagara Falls when the eclipse happened. The weather wasn’t great and we didn’t really get to see the eclipse, but the trip itself was worth the effort. We got to see a true natural wonder and spend time with friends. There were very few time commitments and allowed us to just go and enjoy time away.

Our second trip, not long after this journey to Canada took us all the way across the Atlantic to Switzerland and France.

My daughter was an exchange student in France for a year. We took the opportunity to leverage her language capabilities and go to see some of the places she had been. We went to visit people we knew as well – our exchange daughter lives in France, so visiting her was added to the route. We flew to Geneva.


We stayed and toured there, then took the train into France to meet the host family where my daughter lived. Next up was the train across the country to Le Mans to see our exchange daughter and her family. Along the way we got to experience life less like a tourist and more like somebody living there. We didn’t go to any specific tourist destination, but rather took in various places and experiences along the way. We didn’t rent a car, we took the train. We walked and learned some of the public transport systems. We got to tour both the modern aspects of the cities we were in, and the older parts of the cities.

Cathedrals were two stops that were absolutely worth going to see. We went to both the cathedral in Geneva and the cathedral in Le Mans. Standing inside those structures, getting the true sense of scale was wonderful. It’s easy to understand how people would be in awe of these towering places and the beauty they delivered. Not major tourist spots. No planned tours, but absolutely worth the effort to go.

And that’s really the point. IF you have the chance, GO. Get out. See something new. Add weird things to the list of things you’ve done. Now I can say I’ve had McDonald’s on 3 continents – and I can say I’ve eaten actual ratatouille in France. Run the gamut, see all the places, and do all the things. You’ll be glad you did – and maybe, you’ll make some friends along the way.

Gaps and Dumps

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I didn’t realize the gap I’ve had since the last time I was on here and posting. I really wish there were a way to tie the things I post to my other social media here… that I understood and could easily use.

There was one, very early on and that functionality was taken away. I don’t understand how to make it work – nor do I particularly want to. I already do so many things I absolutely do NOT want to add “web developer” to that list. I really hate programming and program languages.

Yes, in the day job there have been more than one time that I’ve needed to learn LISP routines or some variation on visual programming or… I think the new one is python? I don’t know. I really hate doing them. They’re terrible and I am not meant for that kind of creation.

So – this is the ‘lump’ of things that will follow the huge gap. Hopefully the gaps will be smaller and the lumps less lumpy, but I’m certain I’ve said that sort of thing before.

Obligatory Posts

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Despite having a little time off and the availability to work on things for my website, I didn’t do all the “end of year” things that so many people program and just let go. I find as often as not that I get frustrated by recycled content. There are certainly things to look back at – both good and bad – but there are also many things to look forward to.

No, I don’t do resolutions. I made a new year’s resolution many years ago to *never* make a new year’s resolution again, and I haven’t since then. I post about it every year, and it hasn’t changed.

I received a summary of my “year in books” from Goodreads. I was extremely disappointed in my summary. Not because of the company or the format or anything like that. It was the simple fact that I ended up with less than 10 books for the year. It was just about 2,600 pages of reading total, but the “books read” also included one that I literally shelved as “DNF” because I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. It would be easy to be very depressed about this lack of quality reading, but I’m going to take the advice of a random internet person and be happy that I was reading. I didn’t stop reading, I’m just going slower than my previous years of 2 or 3 books per month. I’ve had a lot going on in my life and reading for pleasure became something of a challenge – but I didn’t stop. There are so many people out there that don’t read at all, and I do NOT want to join those ranks. I’m taking it as a win that I kept plugging along.

So this year I’m going to keep doing the things I love. It will still be a challenging time as things move and change and grow in the family life here. I’ll still have to work at making the time to actually accomplish things, but for some reason the start of this year doesn’t feel as bleak as some in the past. We’ll see.

Up next – some of that “creating” stuff. More to follow~

That drama

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Remember way back at the end of the summer? The sun was out, the weather was warm and there was all this time to just sit and ponder the particulars of being a parent. Writing and creating posts just whenever the mood moved. Something about drama and what parents should… something. I don’t remember.

Here we are in the dark and chilly days of mid-November and somehow two whole months have disappeared. Oh, I know where they went, but they’re are gone just the same.

Having two, non-driving teenagers in different clubs and school based activities has proven to be quite the challenge. Morning, noon and night the schedule here is relentless. Then of course is the drama – the laughing, the tears the yelling… and that’s just me.

There is of course also my professional world. Writing is NOT the day job, and the day job is jumping. On the up side of that, I have accomplished a major first step in my career that has taken me many, many years to get to. It’s just a step, but an important one.

In the end, some of my creativity has suffered. I would not trade a minute of it for sitting and staring at the blank page. Writing is a solitary endeavor in the end, and I have NOT been solitary. I am just fine with this. Long nights and ugly weather will pen us in and give ample time for posting things up to an old fashioned notion like a blog. Hopefully I’ll get here more than once a quarter…

Squeezing

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I have come to discover that writing in any form is a struggle. Yes, I know – all the writers and creative types I know just collectively said “duh”. I get it, but sometimes saying it (or typing it) helps with the reality of making a change.

I am a writer that runs on inspiration. Long haul work is extremely difficult doing that, and finishing something the size and scope of a novel is exactly that – a long haul. I suck at that.

I’ve been chipping away at the edges of writing for many years, but what I have been doing is clearly not working, nor is it getting me the result I desire. I need to finish more, but in order to finish more I need to actually create more. I can’t sit and wait for inspiration or the ever elusive (thought to be mythical) ‘free time’.

So – I’m going to be squeezing things in. Maybe the edits won’t be great. There will be grammar and spelling issues. I can’t edit if it’s not created. The secret story in my head will never go anywhere without trying to record it in some form.

There you go – I squoze it myself.

Secret Connection

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A starting point. I need some kind of warm up. Sitting and staring into a blank page is a genuine challenge – and one that will be overcome. Writing can be developed, just like any other ‘muscle’ so we’re stretching, then digging into a workout.

From time to time I check out a website called “Post Secret”. The idea of the project, if you’re not familiar with it, is that people write a secret on a post card and send it in to an address. This secret is then shared anonymously for others to see. Some are silly. Some are angry. Many, many secrets make connections and help other people see that they are not alone. I suspect my own life would be significantly different than it is today if something like this had been available when I was a kid.

I have spoken to friends and shared before that when I was in my pre- and early teens I was really into Dungeons & Dragons (I still am!). I started playing and gathering all things D&D very early on. This was also the time of the Satanic Panic. Other kids in my neighborhood were told not to associate with me because I played this game. Some kids didn’t get rules that applied to that degree, but their parents removed any and all chance of them owning anything related to D&D. The quote from one mom was, “We understand this is a game of imagination that only needs a paper and pencil. We know we can’t stop that, but we refuse to support it.”

That’s extremely rough when it’s aimed at somebody just developing social skills. Your friend group, likely already limited based on choices that didn’t necessarily fit the social norm of the time, being bent, battered and reduced because a swath of the adults in your life give you “we refuse to support it” as the answer to you wanting to play a game and be social.

I saw this postcard on the Post Secret site:

The person that sent it in is a little younger than I am, but likely caught the back end of that same panic. It also shows (to me) the deep, far reaching social nature of this game. The reason it endures. Fantastical, imaginative and connection creating. When you find ‘your people’ and they join the amazing journey into a place that doesn’t exist anywhere except your mind it is a powerful thing.

For many, many years I refused to share my passion about D&D. I’m not a professional author (clearly) and not a professional artist (witness my art) but I have played this game, and others like it, for the vast majority of my life. Having had all my early attempts to connect with others about it met with reactionary, panic based push back I was not interested in reaching out to get smacked down or insulted. It became habit.

Putting this out here in writing (again) I think is part of my process of getting past that. Yes, given the massive success and mainstream knowledge / understanding of D&D these days it doesn’t seem like a huge leap, but it feels that way to me. I am used to push back, insults, and demeaning nicknames. I’m not over that, but I’m working on it. I’m certainly not intimidated by any individual these days. Also, I know, intellectually, that people are aware of what I do and what I am interested in among my friends. I have recently started extending that awareness out to others, including people I am associated with professionally. I am still attempting to maintain a clear demarcation between work life and personal life (as my lovely wife likes to say, ‘don’t shit where you eat’) but I am not longer hiding things like the YouTube videos or the Twitch stream from them either.

I am who I am. I am passionate about my hobbies and enjoy sharing them. I love this stuff. Maybe not as much as sex, but this ‘secret’ was out there and did what it was supposed to do… it made a connection.

All that writing, and I didn’t even pull a muscle. Time to keep going. Maybe I’ll write up some adventures for the campaign I’m running…

Musing

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Sometimes I forget how much I used to ‘cheat’ and grab time to write from various places. A few minutes here, a couple of paragraphs there. These days those moments seem to be filled in, like water flowing down between ice cubes in your glass. The big objects are there and still relatively the same, the spaces in between are suddenly filled.

Here we are 2 weeks into the new year and I haven’t posted anything yet.

Looking back, it makes sense. There are lots of things I don’t share out here on the internet. There are things that people outside of my immediate, real world circle don’t need to know. There are things they don’t get to know. I realize that my readership numbers are not such that this is an actual problem… but perhaps someday. I will continue to treat this as if somebody actually reads this and cares.

So, along those lines I can say that while many things have changed, even more have stayed the same. Something I have noticed though is a distinct continuation of the creativity slump. When I looked back at my previous “welcome to the new year” post it showed that I’d read something more than 30 books that previous year. This past year I didn’t break 20. That’s dismal for me. A deepening slump.

I’ve submitted less of my writing as well. There just hasn’t been the inspiration… and it’s pretty clear that I need a muse. I’ve been pushing along my D&D playing and writing things for that, but it’s not translating into a creative bump the way it used to.

I have all the bits to work on miniatures and terrain… and have slumped terribly there too. It’s just not moving. There’s lots of amazing content out there to teach and show how to create excellent terrain. There are some amazing artists on my socials that show off great works (and let’s be fair, some not so great – but that’s just as helpful in many ways). I still haven’t been able to even muster a dungeon tile set.

So, what do I do? Where do I start?

I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer for that. It fills me with fear that the drive to do those things is seeping away. I love all that creative stuff. I crave great stories. I want my stories, my art, my creativity to be out there and be part of this amazing, creative world… and it’s just not going.

What do you do? How do you contact your muse?