Review of Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Good morning.

Yesterday I received my copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Since I am going to be doing NaNoWriMo this year, I was particularly anxious to get my hands on it. The package arrived yesterday. My husband ordered the program for us and it arrived with threes headsets and the software license that allows us to install it on five devices.

Of course, I installed immediately! How well does it work? Much better than I expected that it would. I have already used the program to do some fiction writing, to surf the web, and to write this blog entry.

Is it perfect? No. However, it does a pretty damn good job. I installed the program yesterday afternoon. I did only the absolute minimum amount of training recommended by the install program. Even so, I have already dictated thousands of words, and most of them come out correctly.

The program works with WordPress, with Microsoft Word, with Google mail, with Facebook, and even allows you to surf the web. All I need to do is tell it what I’m looking for and Internet Explorer appears with the search results.

Overall this is probably the best word recognition software I have ever used. I really didn’t expect to be this thrilled with it. I also expected to have to spend a lot of time training it. I was wrong. I’m having a lot of fun writing all kinds of different things using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

I suppose that Dragon NaturallySpeaking stop everyone but if you’re willing to be just a little bit patient, I think you will be satisfied with the results. The application is not hard to install. And it didn’t take long to do. Within half an hour, not only have I installed the program, but my son had installed as well.

Would I recommend Dragon NaturallySpeaking to other writers? Yes I would. I’m not entirely sure that I would want use it to edit, but for writing the first draft, I love it. It isn’t as though I can’t type, but anything that saves the wear and tear on my fingers and wrists is worth doing.

If you have used Dragon NaturallySpeaking yourself, please chime in and let me know what you think of it. As far as I am concerned, the money I spent for this product was well spent. Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking has made writing fun again.

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Leave A Comment, Written on October 27th, 2011 , Blogging, Software Review Tags: , , , ,
A Surprising Silver Lining

So, after I complained to everybody I could think to complain to, I received two phone calls. One from Aileen Gunther, and the other from John Bonacic. Both politicans went to Sloatsburg on the day I wrote the last blog post to try to get New Jersey Transit to provide some sort of transportation to people between Port Jervis and Harriman.

The first solution provided was a bus to Beacon, NY where we were to catch a train to Grand Central station. This smooth move changed my two and a half hour commute to over three hours going in and, because of the difficulty in making connections between bus and train, four hours or more coming home. In addition to the extended length of the trip, it cost more because I had to take the subway instead of the PATH train. Not fun!

After two weeks of that unpleasantness, there was an announcement that we would now have train service to Harriman, NY where we would get on buses and go to Ramsey Route 17 to get back on a train to Hoboken. This was somewhat better in that it was closer to the trip that I’m used to, but it still takes me three to three and a half hours each way and, because of having to change from train to bus to train, I can’t get any sleep while traveling. That seems like a minor complaint, but when you leave home at 5:10 AM and don’t get back until nearly 8:00 PM, it leaves you with a big sleep debt.

By the time I was getting home from work and having dinner, I wasn’t getting to bed before 11:00 PM or even later and then getting up at 4:00 AM to start it all over again. You can do that for a while, but the sleep deficit gets to you more quickly than you would expect. I ended up too sick to do any work at all for two days last week.

Now here is the silver lining part…

When I met with my boss this past Monday, she suggested that I would be better off working at home until the train troubles are resolved. This has multiple benefits:

  1. I don’t have to spend so much money on travel. I can cancel my monthly ticket until the trains are repaired and, since I’ll only be going to the office once or twice a month, we can put the money in our savings account.
  2. Because I don’t have to spend four to six hours or more traveling, I can make better use of that time to write, program, or just relax and watch a movie with my family.
  3. Because I am home, I can get a realiable amount of sleep. I go to bed at 10:30 PM and get up at 6:30 AM.
  4. Because I am less tired, I’m getting more work done during my work day.
  5. Finally, because I am getting up on a realiable schedule, I am devoting the first half hour to hour of my day exercising, taking a shower, and having a good breakfast.

Will wonders never cease? By the time I have to start making the commute on a regular basis again, I will be rejuvenated, will probably have lost some weight, and will most likely not have to take so many medications for ailments like high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol.

That all sounds good, but I’ve made plans before and flopped. So I’ll just have to keep you “posted” on my progress.

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24 Comments, Written on September 21st, 2011 , Blogging, life Tags: , , , ,
You just won’t believe this one…

It is ironic that a hurricane named Irene has completely screwed up my commute to work. According to the stories on the NJ Transit web site and elsewhere, The Port Jervis line will not be restored for “months and months” because of flooding damage. OK, not fun, but I can handle having to take a bus to the train or something like that. However, when NJ Transit was contacted to see what arrangements were to be made for people in Port Jervis who commute to the city, their resonse was “take a taxi.”

Really?

How many Port Jervis commuters do they suppose are going to be waiting in line to buy train tickets when they actually get around to restoring service? How many people are going to lose their jobs because they can’t get to work?

This is the message I sent to every elected official I could contact (including President Obama):

I live in Port Jervis, NY and work in Manhattan. I normally catch a train in Port Jervis and travel to Hoboken, then catch the PATH to Manhattan. However, in the wake of Hurricane Irene, New Jersey Transit doing nothing to help people in Port Jervis, NY, Middletown, NY, Campball Hall, NY, and Salisbury Mills, NY to get to work. Rather than running bus service from these communities to where train service picks up, they are advising us to drive to Harriman (for me over an hour drive) to pick up a bus that will take us to train service in New Jersey.

I don’t have a car with which to drive to Harriman. I could probably rent or borrow a car for a few days or even a week or two, but they are saying it is going to take months to fix the problems.

When the office of the mayor of Port Jervis contacted New Jersey Transit to ask them to make arrangements for the people in Port Jervis, they were told that we should “take a taxi to Manhattan.”

Every option from New Jersey Transit involves driving over an hour to catch alternate transportation while they continue to charge me $348 a month for my train ticket.
If I don’t have an easy, affordable way to get to work, I will lose my job. If I lose my job, I will also lose my home because my unemployment won’t even cover my mortgage never mind food or clothing.

Now I realize that my losing my job and my home is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to people who are without electricity, or even already homeless, but somebody has to do something and New Jersey Transit certainly doesn’t care enough about their customers to do anything.

Do you suppose that any of those people are going to do anything, even something as simple as contacting me to get more information? I doubt it. I also sent a message to NJ Transit, telling them that I think this is a piss-poor way to run a railroad. If you agree, then please send email to NJ Transit and any elected officials you care to. Maybe if we all annoy them, they will do something.

I got most of my information from this web page on the Port Jervis web site (which I realize is seriously out of date, but despite the fact that they list the wrong governor for New York, the link still goes to the governer’s web page.  Here is the address:

Regional Elected Officials

Send them lots of emails and maybe we can make a difference.

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10 Comments, Written on August 31st, 2011 , Economics, life Tags: , ,
The Definition of Insanity

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It has been a little bit over a year since I last updated this blog. What great things have I accomplished while I was “away” doing other things? None. I am no closer to any of my goals than I was a year ago.

As far as I am concerned, 2010 was a lost year; a year of falling on my face. Why?

  • I had no stories published. Everything I submitted in 2010 was rejected.
  • I am still over a hundred pounds overweight.
  • I failed the Microsoft ASP .NET certification exam. I use ASP .NET constantly both at work, amd yet I failed.
  • I blew NaNoWriMo big time. I didn’t even write 5,000 words.

And yet…

  • I did write the stories and submit them.
  • I lost 41 pounds.
  • I actually took the Microsoft test, something I’ve been talking about doing for more than ten years.

Baby steps, surely, but I did move forward all the same. Maybe I’ve been asking for two much.

It may seem a little late to be making New Year’s resolutions but…

My 2011 Resolutions

  • Write, submit, and sell at least one story.
  • Lose as much weight this year as I lost in 2010.
  • Pass the .NET exam.

Three little resolutions.

Is anybody still there? I’m sure most of my readers became bored long ago and gave up, but if you are still reading, let me know what your resolutions are. Maybe we can do this thing together.

Besides, if I gave up, what would I do with myself?

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8 Comments, Written on February 6th, 2011 , Blogging, General, Writing Tags: , , ,
Sometimes you just can’t have it all…

I have finally had to come to the conclusion that I can’t do everything. I was trying to update this blog weekly, write a book, participate on Brigit’s Flame by writing a short story every week, study for Microsoft Certification, and also do my real job, the one that pays the bills. This left very little time for everyday things like, oh, sleep and spending time with my family.

I just couldn’t do it. Trying to do too many things at once caused a system crash (my system, not the computer) and I just haven’t felt like doing anything for several months. My health has been suffering and so has my psyche. The whole experience just made me feel sorry for myself and left me incapable of accomplishing much of anything. The few stories I did manage to write got me nothing more than a bunch of rejections.

Is it time for me to give up on writing? Maybe I’m just fooling myself. I thought that I write well. Most of the people who read my stories like them (except for the magazine editors, apparently) so if I haven’t figured out what I’m doing wrong by now, maybe I should just quit.

Why can’t I do that? No matter how many rejections I get, I find myself writing again. It builds up, like water pressure behind a clog in a pipe and after a while, I start getting story ideas that swoop and dive around my head like crazed birds until I sit down at the keyboard and get them out there. I can’t help myself.

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3 Comments, Written on January 25th, 2010 , Blogging, life, Writing Tags: , , ,
It’s Later than you Think

I am a procrastinator by nature. I tend to do things at the last moment. Most of the time it works pretty well for me but sometimes…

Last weekend I was busy. We had a party for my son’s birthday and by the time I thought of the blog post, it was Friday night. I vowed that this week would be different. Yet here it is quarter to midnight and I haven’t written anything yet. Maybe this is why I haven’t had a major publishing success?

Even so, I’m too persistent (too stupid?) to quit. I keep trying.

It’s time to go back to the drawing board. I am going to throw out everything I’ve already done and begin at the beginning with a new idea, a new story, and maybe, finally, a success.

They say that one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Maybe that is what I’ve been doing. I have about half a dozen different story ideas and I keep trying to redo them and get a bestseller out of it. Maybe I’m just getting bored with my own stories. And, if I’m bored, my readers will be as well. Time to start fresh.

So…

Tonight’s post is going to be short and sweet. I’ve got a book to write.

See you next week…

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3 Comments, Written on October 10th, 2009 , Writing Tags: , , ,
What did I Say?

Take a look at the following short exchange and see if you can tell me what’s wrong with it:

“Good morning.”

“Good morning to you,” I replied.

“What is new?” said my boss, George Newbinging.

“Nothing. How was your weekend?”

“Great,” he replied. “How are the kids?”

“Oh, same old, same old,” I said.

So, what do you think? Besides being boring as hell, this little dialog does none of the jobs that dialog is supposed to do within a story. Dialogue can do any or all of the following:

  • advance the plot
  • tell us about the characters
  • heighten the conflict
  • provide information the viewpoint character might not otherwise know

I suppose I could make a case for increased tension if the employee had done something terrible, say screwed up some paperwork or lost an important order. Then the very fact that the boss doesn’t say anything about the incident could be a means to heighten the tension. Otherwise? Not so much.

While people exchange comments like the above every day in real life, they can’t afford to do the same in fiction. Dialogue in fiction must perform at least one of the functions I listed above.

Advance the Plot

Take a look at this short exchange:

“You must be my new master.” The man looked around and sighed. “What year is it?”

“Two thousand and nine,” Ken replied. He tried to get up but he couldn’t move.

“Only eight years this time,” said the man shaking his head. Then he bowed low. “I am a jinni and you are my master. What is thy first wish?”

Now Ken was glad he hadn’t run away. “How many do I get?”

“Three wishes are standard. Everybody knows that. ”

“Finally something is going my way,” said Ken.

In just a few lines we’ve managed to convey the information that Ken has found a jinni and that he is entitled to three wishes in a more entertaining way that “Ken found a jinni and it told him that he was entitled to three wishes.” The narrative version might use less words but the version with dialogue is more interesting.

Tell us About the Characters

If you are doing your job right, the characters in your stories each have their own mannerisms in speech and action. For example:

“Yo, man, how’s it hangin’?”

“Good morning, my dear fellow, how is the world treating you on this fine day?”

Obviously there are differences between these two characters’ speech patterns. The informality of the first speech (yeah, I know it sounds corny) might indicate a lower level of education or it might indicate someone who is putting on a personality that isn’t really his own. Which it is depends on the context of the story of course.

Heighten the Conflict

Dialogue is the perfect way to heighten conflict. Don’t tell us that two characters are angry at each other. Show it in the way that they speak. Instead of:

Mom was angry.

Have Mom show us herself like this:

“Matthew Denis Smith, what in the wide world do you think you are doing?”

No question that Mom is a little bit annoyed now, is there?

Provide Information

Dialogue can give us information that we might not be able to get any other way. For instance, if a story is told from the point of view of a character that was not a witness to something that needs to be presented, a character that did see the incident can tell the viewpoint character about it in a much more interesting way than, “Later I found out, blah, blah, blah.”

I find dialogue is more fun to write than narrative too. But that’s just icing on the cake, so to speak.

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2 Comments, Written on September 26th, 2009 , Fiction, Writing Tags: , , ,
A Matter of Character

I went to a free course at the Gotham Writers Workshop on Wednesday night. It was worth the extra effort that I had to make to attend. It really was a bit of a hardship because the class ended at 8pm so I had to take the 9:58pm train home. That meant that I didn’t get home until 12:30am. How easy is it to get home and go to sleep right away? I can’t do it. By the time I was in bed and falling asleep, it was nearly 2am. Needless to say I was a bit tired the next day, although it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe the high I got from going to the class is what kept me going the next day.

It was a high. The funny thing is that I didn’t really hear anything I didn’t already know, but hearing it made me anxious to apply the information myself. What we talked about was character. We talked about how you go about creating characters that have depth. Really? Everybody knows that.

Then we were given ten minutes to describe a character. It could be someone you know or someone with whom you are barely acquainted. I thought I had this one down pat. I started off and (I thought) was going along great.

After a second little exercise where we were to show the character eating breakfast, the teacher asked some of us to volunteer to read what we had written. That was when I realized what a poor job I was doing. The two students who ready their breakfast scenes had basically written what could have been the beginning of excellent stories. I almost had the feeling that they were ringers, professional writers invited to the class to make the rest of us realize how much we needed to take the full, paid-for 10-week course.

I tried to put my failure down to the fact that I don’t think quickly, that if I had more time I would have done a better job. I even blamed the fact that I was writing with a pen instead of a keyboard.The truth is that most of my characters are about as three-dimensional as paper dolls. I have known for some time that my fiction was missing something and i think this is it. I don’t think I really understood what it meant to create three-dimensional characters.

My characters often have desires, quirks, I try to make their speech patterns enough different so that you can recognize them from their words. But, when it comes right down to it, they’re still boring, often nothing more than a collection of quirks.

Since I was eliminated early (for the second month in a row!) from the monthly writing competition at Bridget’s Flame so I’ve got time to work on my characterization skills before the next competition begins. So this is what I am going to do:

  1. I am going to create a character by giving a physical description.
  2. Then I will write about the person’s past.
  3. I will look at his or her hopes and desires.
  4. Finally I will describe the person’s deepest, darkest secrets.
  5. Once all of that has been done, I will place the character in a situation and see if all that preparation will give me a better story and a more interesting protagonist.

It’s worth a try. If you want to try it too, go ahead. If you end up with something you want to share, put a snippet or two in your comments to this entry. I’d be interested to see what you come up with. My results? See you next Saturday.

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1 Comment, Written on September 19th, 2009 , Exercises, Fiction, Writing Tags: , , , ,
Man’s Informality to Man

My husband took me and our son to Olive Garden tonight for dinner. The place was beginning to fill up with Saturday night customers so we had to add our name to the list for a table. I went up to the hostess and said to her,”I’d like a table for three.” I paused and said, “Smith.”

“Thank you. What is your first name?”

How is that relevant? I looked at the hostess as she stood, pen poised over paper, waiting for my answer. Reluctantly I said, “Irene.”

This raised a question that I’ve pondered more than once. That is:

When did we become so informal?

Once upon a time young people didn’t address those who were obviously older by their first name. I might enjoy the thought that maybe I look younger than I am, but the truth is that, when I was a little girl, people didn’t address others that they didn’t know by their first name. When you added yourself to a list at a restaurant, you gave the hostess or maitre ‘d your last name and then when it was your turn they would say, “Smith, party of three.”

This change does not just apply to restaurants. When you go to the doctor’s office these days you never hear a nurse say, “Mrs. Smith, could you come with me, please?” It’s always, “Irene,” and then they turn and walk away without saying any more. Now you’ve got to scurry after them as quickly as possible, hoping that they don’t get too far ahead for you to find them again because almost every doctor’s office is a maze of examining rooms but that’s another blog entry.

When I go to the bank, not a common occurrance since my husband usually takes care of our finances, the teller calls me Irene, when I used my credit card at WalMart, the 15-year old at the register says, “Here you go Irene,” when she hands my card back to me. I have been married to my husband for 15 years now and I can count the number of times I have been addressed as “Mrs. Smith” on the fingers of one hand.

Even in the work place, formality has gone by the wayside. I am as guilty as any of calling the CEO of the company I work for by his first name but, now that I think of it, I’m wondering if that’s the best thing for us all? Would we respect each other more if I called him Mr. Sherif and he called me Mrs. Smith?

Some people seem to feel that this informality is a good thing. “Why be so formal?” they say. “It’s so much more friendly the other way.”

At first thought, that seems to be true. However, consider your childhood. To whom were you more respectful, the teacher you had to call “Mrs. Smith” or the kid on the other side of the aisle that you called “Bobby?” I’m betting that Mrs. Smith would have won out.

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Leave A Comment, Written on September 12th, 2009 , life Tags: , , , ,
Sometimes you just get Lucky

This is going to be a short post tonight. I’ve been fighting with a ‘flu for the past two weeks, it’s late, and I’m tired.

I had my 50th birthday this week. I find it hard to believe (somehow I don’t remember when I became this old) but there it is. I imagine that a lot of the complaining that I’ve been doing lately has something to do with adjusting to–what? middle age? early old age? I’ve reached a point in my life where most people are satisfied with who they have beomce or they are busy bemoaning their fate and trying to understand what went wrong. Me? I’m thinking about going back to school. I’m thinking about trying to start a whole new career, and I’m looking forward to the birth of my fifth grandchild.

Then again, while I was far advanced with intellectual things like reading and writing and ‘rithmetic, I’ve always been behind the curve when it comes to social and career milestones. For example, I didn’t buy my first car until I was nearly 30 years old and didn’t marry until I was 35. And yet in usual fashion for me, it all worked out well because when I did marry, I married a man with two grown-up children. I became a grandmother before I gave birth for the first time.

Lately it seems as though a lot of things have been going badly wrong. My father died, I had a credit card taken away from me (not that the loss of a credit card compares to my father’s death) and I can’t seem to get any reaction to my writing but “thanks, but no thanks.” I’ve been tired and sick and just feeling sorry for myself. Then this weekend came along and I had to admit that things aren’t so bad after all.

In fact, so far this weekend has been absolutely perfect. Two of my granddaughters came to spend Thursday and Friday night with us. We played computer games together, we talked, we made pizza and we watched movies. Then tonight my step-son and daughter-in-law came with my grandson and we all went out to dinner. I looked around that the table for eight at the restaurant tonight and thought, “How can anybody be luckier than this?”

It got me thinking about how very lucky I really am in so many ways. For example (and this is in no particular order):

  • True, my father died. On the other hand, he was 85 years old and I was nearly 50. I have some close friends whose parents died before they graduated high school. My son has been lucky enough to know his grandfather and my father was around long enough to see that he did a good job raising me. I know he was proud of me.
  • I was lucky enough to have my paternal grandmother in my life until I was in my 40s. She died at the age of 99 in 2003 when I was 44 years old.
  • I have a husband who loves me so much that he was willing to move from New York State to Washington State (and greater love hath no man for woman, than to drive across country with a nearly 3-year old child) and then to pick up and move back again 4 years later when my father had a stroke.
  • I dearly love both of my step-children and their spouses. When my husband and I were married, my step-daughter was Maid of Honor and my step-son Best Man.
  • I adore all four (soon to be five) of my grandchildren.
  • I have a good job at a time when many people have lost theirs through no fault of their own.
  • We managed to get a mortgage for a brand new house right before everything fell apart. I love my home and so did my father when he visited us. Our home is a place where friends feel welcome and I love entertaining.
  • I have good friends who care about me.
  • My husband is still addicted to me even though we’ve been together for nearly 25 years.

Who could ask for anything more? It would just be greedy.

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Leave A Comment, Written on September 5th, 2009 , life Tags: , , , ,
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Irene Smith

The personal blog of Irene Smith