For the "I Can't Write" People: Dictation Works
okay so. this one's for a specific person in every single class i've taught. they sit toward the back, they've been nodding along the whole time, and about week three they finally say it out loud: "this is great, but i can't write."
here's the thing. i don't think that's true. i think they can't write, meaning sit at a keyboard and produce sentences that feel finished. that's a different problem than not having anything to say. most of the time they've got a whole story sitting there, they just can't get it out through their fingers.
so skip the fingers. use your mouth instead.
the actual method
you talk, someone (or something) writes it down. that's it. that's the whole technique. there's a few ways to do it:
- have someone else type while you talk. this is what i did with aidan, which i'll get to.
- use your phone's voice-to-text. open notes, hit the little microphone, just talk like you're telling someone the story. it'll mess up some words. don't worry about it yet.
- record yourself and transcribe it later, or have someone else transcribe it. this works well if you're not comfortable with the phone doing it live, or if you want to think out loud without watching words appear on a screen while you're trying to talk.
the point of all three is the same. you are removing "writing" from the process entirely, for now. you're just telling the story to somebody. cleanup happens after, and cleanup is a much smaller job than starting from a blank page.
why this works better than you'd think
when you write, you're doing two jobs at once: remembering the story, and performing it in proper sentences. that second job is the one that trips people up. it's why the page stays blank for an hour.
when you talk, you drop the second job completely. you just remember, out loud, the way you would to a friend on a drive. the sentences come out rougher, sure. but they come out true. you say "he always drove that truck too fast down the hill" instead of staring at a cursor trying to figure out how to phrase "he had a fast driving style." talking gets you the boring good details i keep going on about, because that's how memory actually comes out of a person's mouth. nobody tells a story in topic sentences.
a story about this actually happening
so my friend aidan claims, to this day, that he can't write. he says it like it's a diagnosis. we were driving back from a DI run, dropping off a bunch of stuff nobody in his house wanted anymore, and somewhere around the point of the mountain he started telling me about his grandfather's habit of stopping the car at every single fruit stand between here and wherever they were going, whether anyone wanted fruit or not.
i had my phone in the cupholder. we hit a red light and i just started typing what he was saying, as fast as i could, right there at the light. he kept talking, i kept typing, the light turned green, i typed some more at the next one. by the time we got home i had most of it.
it's one of the best pieces i've ever collected. it's better than a lot of stuff i've labored over myself. and aidan still says he can't write. he's not wrong, technically. he didn't write it. he told it, and somebody caught it. that's the job.
how to set this up at home
if you're doing your own memory: grab your phone, open voice-to-text, and just start talking like you're explaining it to a friend who wasn't there. don't read from notes. don't try to make it sound official. if you lose your train of thought, just say "okay wait, let me back up" out loud, right into the recording. you'll edit that part out later.
if you're trying to get it out of someone else (a parent, a grandparent, anyone who insists they've got nothing to say): don't hand them a recorder and ask them to perform. that freezes people up worse than a blank page does. catch them the way i talked about a few lessons back, casual, in the car, over pancakes, and just have your phone quietly recording or your notes app open. ask one small question. "what was grandpa's truck like." then let them talk and don't interrupt.
one caution here, and it's not a big one, but say it out loud anyway: if you're recording someone else's voice, especially a phone call, tell them you're doing it. most people don't mind at all once they know it's for the family history and not going on the internet. but it's their voice and their story, and asking first just keeps things simple and friendly.
the cleanup part
once you've got the transcript, whether it's from voice-to-text or your own typing at a red light, go through and do three things: cut the "ums," fix the sentences that trail off into nothing, and find the one detail that's carrying the piece, the fast driving, the fruit stands, whatever it is. build around that. you're not writing from scratch anymore. you're editing something that already exists. that's a much easier job than the one everyone's afraid of.
Before next time
find someone in your life who says they "can't write," and get them talking for two minutes about anything specific, a car, a recipe, a habit. type or record while they go. bring whatever you get, rough is completely fine.