NaNoWriMo + Dictation + AI grammar checking = Yay

This is my second National Novel Writing Month, and so far this year is much better than last. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to produce a 50,000 + novel in one month. That requires type 1667 words a day on average. This year with the help of the microsoft dictation feature combined with Grammarly I am easily making my daily quota. In fact I am well ahead of schedule.

I am a fair touch typist, but typing 1667 words a day takes time. I was reluctant to try the dictation feature in Office. I have tried voice dictation before, many years ago, and It left a bad impression. Clearly things have changed. The cloud based dictation service is much more accurate than I remembered. (I learned the hard way that you should set the accent feature to get the best accuracy. Luckily there is an Australian English accent setting.) Usually I can dictate about 1700 + words in about 70 minutes.

The dictation is accurate, but not perfect. That is where Grammarly comes in. I upload the Word file to Grammarly to correct errors in transcription and grammar. As a rule I spend about 1.5 times as much time in Grammarly as I do dictation. The end result is a file that is better edited than using the keyboard alone.

I will add I believe a rough draft, no matter how you produce it, should be a mass of words. You can always fix it later. The process I have now is perfect for this.

https://nanowrimo.org/