(PeteCresswell) wrote:

Per Stef:
People who can write via dictation have always amazed me. Something I
could never do. One would think if you can think it and type it, you
can just speak it. Doesn't work that way. At least with me, and a
whole lot of other writers.

Some people are just born "composers".

Guy in my college dorm, for instance... The rest of us would be pulling
an all-nighter getting the Monday essay ready for English 101 (1
mechanical error, grade drops 1 grade; 2 mechanical errors grade drops 2
grades; 3 mechanical errors = F) - except for this guy.

He would just sit down at his typewriter and type 10 pages or so without
stopping except for the occasional typo-fix pause.

We'd ask "How you do dat?" and he would reply that he had been working
on it all week... and it just needed to be put on paper.

But he didn't dictate the composition. He still "typed" it.

I used to do roughly the same thing in high school and college, and
still do, at least with small factual works (fiction's different),
except I now no longer compose first in long hand (I used to be a
lousy typist and it got in the way of the writing), edit, and correct
mistakes, then type the final draft. I just start typing in the word
processor, editing and correcting as I go.

Stef