Writing Tips Articles

• Talk Your Writing

Have you ever heard of a talking or speaking block?

Seriously, other than stuttering and fear of public speaking, everyone can talk - endlessly and without trepidation.

Therefore, talking your writing is a foolproof way to end any writer's block. You simply talk about what you consciously already know and then let that prime the pump for more information to come bubbling up from your unconscious mind.

It helps to get prepared. First is having a base idea of the topic or hero/ villain/ setting. Then research on what you don't already know... the setting is in Tuscany and you've never been there (if you've never been there why write about it -- but that's another subject). Or you love birds and you want to write a book on the care and feeding of canaries - what's out there? What is the competition and their websites? (more detail on the in depth research process I use)

Next after you've completed your research comes organization. You can quickly do this in your head. I would recommend using ImageStreaming at this point to build the interconnections in your knowledge, so that you will easily create new, useful and exciting ideas.

Then express it by talking out the structure of what you see yourself producing. Allow the expressing of what you know to generate more and more detail and fresh ideas.

You may find that it takes awhile to get used to talking your story or point out. I found that it does take regular practice to generate the same quality of ideas and have a useful organized structure to the meanderings of the mind.

In fact, I'd say that for skilled and experienced writers, this isn't the "be all end all" technique... If you have a lot of hours in on the keyboard or pushing the pen, you will have a very grooved and refined ability to draw ideas out by expressing them through your fingers.

However, changing the modality of expression to talking can be a seriously helpful endeavor. It just ain't immediately easy! As long as you are prepared for that effort it can pay huge dividends.

The reality is that written productivity -- once you are prepared and have all the research and background -- is quite slow. You can talk faster than you can write or type. Skilled practitioners of "talking to write" can generate 60 pages per hour of rough content! Wow!

Producing a lot of ideas and then editing down to the gems is a genius thinking strategy that flat out works. So talking to write has a serious advantage in that regard. You must use different parts of your brain to talk out loud as compared to writing and that means you begin to access new and different ideas. That is another advantage.

When you talk out loud and begin to up the pace of what you are saying, you can easily outrun your internal squelcher. The squelcher is used to only having to "beak off" at the slow pace that your mind is working at when you are writing. It cannot easily keep up when you are talking... Have you ever just blurted something out and then regretted it? This is another advantage of "speaking your writing".

Like all writing, the quality of the finished product is determined during the editing stage. When you start to produce a far larger quantity of "raw" product, there is a lot more editing that needs take place. I'd suggest that you do a quick and dirty first couple edits and then hand final editing off to others!

It's important for all writers to remember that more ideas expressed equals better opportunity to produce quality. The deep, dark secret of "talent" is being able to produce a lot of ideas. Quality comes from pruning those expressed ideas down to genius.

What the heck am I supposed to do with all this yapping content now that I've generated it? Tools that can really help:
CopyTalk -~$60/month; idictate - 1.25cents/word; etranscriptionist - $1.50/minute; FantasticTranscripts - $150/audio hour.

For do it yourself transcription, use transcription software (Express Scribe, Transcriber) to make it easier to control the playback for your typing.