The Blonde Diaries

As you might recall, I just finished reading the book Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger. In this book, one of the three main characters is named Leigh and she is a book editor. She is assigned a well-known author (per the book) to edit his latest novel. The process picks up after the first draft has been written and follows the editing process which seems to take months. I have been pondering though how long it must take to actually write a book or a draft of a book before the editing and rewriting process begins. I figure with the technology that is available most authors must at least type their novel drafts and not hand write them. Even with typing, I think it would take me forever to get my first draft as I took the Dragon’s typing speed test this morning and did miserably in my opinion. See my proof below lol!

I always enjoyed creative writing while in school and reading books lately has really drawn me back into the idea of writing short stories if nothing else but pure enjoyment and to serve as an outlet for my thoughts and feelings. I found a writing project called NaNoWrimo which begins on November 1st. NaNoWrimo actually is short for National Novel Writing Month. This project is challenging people to write a novel in a month. I wasn’t quite sure how that would be possible until I stumbled upon a program by Dragon Naturally Speaking Solutions which turns your spoken words into typed text. This program is available for both Windows and Mac users and will basically allow you to “type” faster than you physically can right now. I was glad to see that they have programs that would work for both platforms because I have Windows and would use the Windows version. I have found recently that some of the more technologically advanced programs are just for Macs. If you are interested in this writing project like I am I think that using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for NaNoWrimo would be a fantastic idea.

Here are two demo videos of Dragon fast at work to show you how easy it is to use Dragon’s software and how accurate the software is when translating your words:

There are many Dragon Reviews available on their website to see how customers used Dragon in their everyday lives and you will be able to easily see how it will help you in both this contest and for whatever other uses you would like to use it for – writing to-do lists, company meetings, the possibilities are endless.

So I think I will try to write a novel in a month using Dragon’s software and see how far I can get.

Tags: Books, creative writing, writing