Tuesday 27 September 2016

Review of speech recognition software

Just bought a speech recognition bit of software for £2.89 from the Windows App store and I love it already!

It's called SpeechToText Pro, and with absolutely no training at all, I dictated "Peter Piper picked a pickled pepper.  Blimey!  This is a bit good!" into it and it was all right except the two exclamation marks and it wrote "Has a bit tired" instead of the last bit.  Absolutely no training whatsoever!  Brilliant value for less than £3 and no training at all!

The look is very basic... think MS DOS and you're there!  For under a fiver though, it's a lot better than I was expecting and if you can cope with basic graphics then it's amazing value for money and the best £2.89 I've spent for a very long time!

It's definitely better than any of the more expensive software I've tried and will be using it to write my stories from now on!  With the more expensive software, you're paying for the brand name and the graphics.

Even if you're a millionaire who can afford the expensive software, you still have to spend hours a day training it to your voice.  The programmers of SpeechToText Pro could earn a lot more even raising the price to a tenner and updating the graphics a bit, but they have made a totally awesome programme that's easy to use, very user friendly and amazingly accurate from the very first word you say!

Go on, buy it now and you'll very quickly see what I'm on about!

Monday 26 September 2016

Has anyone got any ideas please?

I'm after some chapter ideas for my next novel.  It'll be a YYA of about 100k words, but I haven't got a clue other than that!  Has anyone got any ideas pretty please?

Sunday 25 September 2016

And it's finished!

I've written 40k words in 20 days (including my 2 breaks) which ain't bad going.

I've got my NaNo novel planned out, ready for 1st November, so I'm going to reward myself by having the rest of September and all of October off.

Yay!

Saturday 24 September 2016

One more chapter left to write

Just written chapter 19, so I've just got chapter 20 to write tomorrow and it's all finished!

Still haven't decided on making it into another novella and finish writing chapter 20 with 40k words or if I should write another 10k and make it into a novel.

I still can't decide!  lol

Friday 23 September 2016

It's taken all day, but...

Just written my 36,000th word and I've got 2 more planned chapters to write, but I'm thinking of writing another couple of chapters just to take it to 44k and a mini chapter to finish the novel off and take it up to 45k...

Or should I just stop in 2 days time with what I've planned and make it another novella?

Opinions please!

Thursday 22 September 2016

Haven't written anything today

Spent a while with a friend today, so I'm back to writing 2k words a day tomorrow  :-)

Wednesday 21 September 2016

Another 4k words written today, because...

I'm meeting up with a friend tomorrow so wanted to be sure to get it done today so that I didn't get behind tomorrow.

Tuesday 20 September 2016

4k words written in 10 hours

Not bad going I reckon after having yesterday as a day off... the first few hundred words of each chapter were tough going, but I got there in the end!  Yay!

That's yesterday's 2k written

Just got another 2k to write and I'm back on track!

Aiming to go back to writing 2k again today

Had the day off yesterday and totally missed meeting up with C because his texts didn't come through until the evening, so I'm back to writing the 2k words a day today and I'll have a break whenever C wants to come over, then write into the evening.

Wish me luck!

Monday 19 September 2016

Alright and all right

I'm a member of SCBWI in the BI region and there has been a discussion on the FB page about when to use the words 'alright' and when to use 'all right'.

I reckon that if you can put another word between the 'all' and the 'right' then you should use the spaced spelling (eg all the right questions) but if you can't then it's the non-spaced version (I'm alright Jack).

What do you reckon?  When should you use the spaced version and why?  When should you use the single word version and why?

Giving myself the day off today

I'm not going to write anything today.  Gonna wait until Steve's carer has been and gone then have a bath, get dressed, put the washing on and just enjoy a free day!

I'm well over half way through it so I reckon I deserve it!

Sunday 18 September 2016

26k words written now

I've written 26,003 in 13 days... not bad going I reckon!

Thursday 15 September 2016

Another 2k written and I've had me tea, so...

Written just over 2k words today and I've just had me tea, so I'm going to take me pills and catch up on emails and forums for a bit, then head to bed!

Wednesday 14 September 2016

2k written again and I'm now going to bed

Just put the final full stop in chapter 9 so I'm going to bed now for an earlyish start again in the morning.

Nite nite!

Tuesday 13 September 2016

I'm really achieving those 2k words every day, because...

I spend the time until 11.30am every morning doing totally non-creative things then from 11.30am to 3.30pm I'm a writing machine and get the 2k words written in those for hours!

In theory I could write 4k words a day, but don't want to push myself too hard and take the enjoyment out of it.  Maybe I could write 3k words a day so that I'm thrown straight into the action, mid-chapter every day?

Monday 12 September 2016

Another 2k words written this afternoon

It's definitely helping to not start writing until lunchtime cos I've written a chapter without stopping yesterday and today and I got straight into writing after reading the previous chapter instead of not being able to start until about 1.30pm before that so I reckon I'll keep turning the laptop on, checking my emails and forums and not start writing until at least 11.30am every morning then I can keep going until about 3.30pm without stopping (other than bathroom breaks) and not a moment of writer's block in sight!

Sunday 11 September 2016

Success!

In 5.5 hours this afternoon I wrote more than I have all day for the last week!

So, I've decided not to even open up Word until at least 11am every day... if I start the laptop before that, it's purely for checking my email and forums and things like that.

Then the closest I'm allowed to writing is reading through the previous chapter at 10.50am ready for the words to flow at 11am.

If that works every day next week I'll be back into my writing mindframe ready for NaNo again!  Yay!

Going to try something new today

Going to try not writing until at least lunchtime to see if that helps me be creative this afternoon and evening.

I've written literally 3 or 4 paragraphs all morning, every morning up to now then written the rest of the chapter after I've had me lunch.

So, I'm thinking, it's got something to do with blood sugar or my brain not waking up until after I've eaten or something like that.

I'll find out today I guess!  lol

Friday 9 September 2016

Mikey is going to...

fancy someone else in chapter 4... will she like him enough to go out with him though?

What about Hannah?  How will she feel?

Wednesday 7 September 2016

Haven't written anything today, so...

I'll definitely have to get back into it tomorrow!

Tuesday 6 September 2016

Managed to write 2k words today

After a non-existant start to writing this morning and early afternoon, I've written just over 2,000 and I'm heading to bed now.

Getting started has always been the hardest for me, but now that I've written that first chapter hopefully it'll be plain sailing from now on!

I was wrong, 4 days ago, when I said

I was wrong when I said I'd been rejected by a publisher... at the time I posted it, I thought no reply meant an outright no.

Just seen a post from someone on SCBWI that the no reply wasn't a definite no, it was just that they were snowed under with submissions and they were planning on getting back to everyone who had submitted with a definite answer, but they've extended their response time to 4-6 weeks now so I might still have a publisher after all!

Wish me luck again!  lol

Monday 5 September 2016

Finishing up the planning of my next YA novel today

Does anyone happen to be any good at thinking up novel titles?

I'm going to finish planning it today but I've got no idea what to call it!

Saturday 3 September 2016

Didn't win the slushpile challenge either

...but I'm going to pick myself up, dust myself off and keep trying... at least the rejections proove that I'm trying and being read even though I haven't been accepted yet - if I wasn't getting any rejections it would mean that I wasn't being read and I wasn't trying to get accepted.

The more I put myself out there, the more I'm being read and the more likely I am to be accepted by someone one day!

Friday 2 September 2016

Has anyone got...

I'm doing reviews on this blog as well as a word counts but need things to review!

I'm not going to review things of people I know because I can't be unbiased about that and would prolly give a 5 star review because I didn't want to offend them rather than a non-biased 3 star review if you see what I mean?

I'll do creative stuff on this blog and other stuff on my personal blog but I need to know about things that you want to read reviews of!

So, if you've got ideas for things that I can review, just leave me a quick comment about what it is and where I can buy it from.  Please don't start by saying "this is great, you really should review it" or "this is terrible for me, total waste of money" because you're already telling me how to review it before I've even seen it!

So, just leave me a quick comment in reply to this post and I'll get back to you!

Got rejected by a publisher yesterday, so...

I'm back on track with 5 submissions at a time again and I sent an ER to a children's magasine last night instead.  If they take me on then it'll prompt me to write more ERs!  If they don't then that's OK by me too!

Thursday 1 September 2016

Gel pens from Amazon

I got my order of 60 gel pens yesterday and I was concerned by some of the critical reviews but they were under a tenner so as long as most of them worked, I was happy.

I tried them out last night and I loved every single one of them!  The negative reviews obviously didn't understand that ink gets cold and doesn't work, but if you rub them between your hands for a few seconds, the ink flows freely again!

One thing that concerned me was that some of the tops seemed to be stuck in position and wouldn't come off as easily as most of them.

That, if I hadn't been willing to keep trying to get them to work, would have been another reason for a negative review.

Like with the ink though, I just rubbed the pen between my palms for a few seconds et voila.  Again!

It's got a 5 star review from me on Amazon and I'm going to ask what colour to use at any of my own book signings in future too!

If you're an illustrator who prefers ink, then get these pens - I love them!