I injured my elbow in March, then, in my one and only stupid “dominant hand” move after start my second round of PT in July, tore a nice new chunk of the ligament. After that, PT was totally ineffective. So… Surgery is almost certain in October (I’ll find out Wednesday), when I get back from Uganda. I can type now, most of the time, but I have a hard time hand-writing, and there are days when I type poorly and slowly with my left hand because my elbow hurts. Meanwhile, I need to get Darian’s War done, and am way behind because of this injury.
So I’m now looking at voice recognition software, and need some recommendations. Anyone have something they love? Hate? Advice?
Thanks for your help!
Words on the Page 
I think the best in the business is Dragon Naturally Speaking (been awhile since I’ve checked though.)
Thanks! I’ve heard good things about Dragon, but enough bad that I’m a little hesitant. Not that I’m going to have a ton of choices, esp using a Mac. 😛
Dragon naturally speaking is good as long as you can see the screen. If you are blind like me it’s a real bitch to use. It is a bit hard to set up the first time as well. My husband loves it though but he can see. I hope this helps.
Thanks! That does help – I’m a VERY visual person so have been worried about it from that standpoint – I watch what I type and that helps me develop the story. So maybe I can basically do the same thing with Dragon. 🙂
I tried Dragon again about a year ago. I could never get it to understand my accent properly no matter how much I trained it, but that’s common (the Aussie accent does weird things with vowels that confuses the heck out of software).
The main issue I had with it was the speed at which I had to talk. It was definitely NOT capable of keeping up with a normal talking pace – it would just skip words in the sentence or combine them together. So if you can dictate at a slower speed than you’d talk (about half to two-thirds talking speed, I found) without losing your writer-magic you should be right. Personally, I found that drop in speed totally killed my flow, so I gave up on dictation, but YMMV.
Hmm. that’s definitely a consideration. I have never “talked” my writing before, but I can’t imagine I would talk slower than normal. Although I’m not going to have much choice UNLESS I can get the work done before the end of 10/9. Now I’m trying to decide if it’s better to just work crazy hours and get finished and not worry about it. Thanks for your comments!