During the Homebrew Website Club – Writing Edition on October 8, 2024 I talked about using the default microphone on my iOS device to do first drafts of blog posts and writing. In talking about it I demonstrated the transcriber and here’s the raw output. It’s only my voice, not what others said during the meeting. Consider this an example of a “vomit draft” and can be a writing tool to facilitate more drafts, seldom an end to itself.
I can start talking and it will transcribe and you can kind of see that good enough. It says it’s as bad as it’s as bad or as good as a fast draft. If words are simple then it does a pretty good job and certainly when you’re walking around taking the recycling out, I want to remember this phrase that I just suddenly thought of I’ve done it with Trying to remember dreams in the morning like it just immediately try to type it in as it as a message to myself for an email to myself and that keyboard and it’s literally transcribing this whole thing as I talk, so maybe I can share that garbage I am not introspective enough to know, but I I tend to voice what I write in my head and so I don’t know that any of your particularly close readers of me and close listeners to me but most of my writing sounds like me like I will use the same vocabulary in the same tone and be the same smart Alec, California whatever the hell I am in my post is when I speak so it’s pretty similar pretty similar if I was writing something fiction. I don’t know how that would work, but I don’t. If I was really voice trying to voice someone’s you know vernacular that wasn’t really me that would be trickier. I know that you as as a writer of fiction I have different things me. I’m always just me.
Update, 2 hours later: A lot of today’s meetup on writing was about what tools can help.
Inspired by today’s conversation, James posted an audio monologue: A Monologue on Modality. He posted an .m4a file. And later, a transcript. James continues to inspire as he experiments with his blog and website.
The first I can remember bloggers being able to post video was 20 years ago with Blogger’s service, Audioblogger powered by “Audblog.” I used it a few times on this site. Posts tagged #audioblogger
It was simple to use. Connect your phone and it would drop an image of a play button with a link to an audio file. MP3 file. Primitive but effective. The font tags in the source code to that archived home page charm me. It really does feel often like everything old is new again right now on the web. Blogs are returning. Independent websites have renewed enthusiasm. And so an old fogey like me can try to remember what lessons we learned.
Speaking into a recorder is not a new technique for writers. A World of His Own is an episode of The Twilight Zone from 1960. In the teleplay by Richard Matheson. a writer uses a dictaphone to write his thoughts, and in so doing makes them come true. It becomes a metaphor for creation and imagination itself. It also does something unusual, the protagonist interacts with Rod Serling, narrating, breaking the rules of the narrative in a comedic and yet also dark way.
Funny, I was pondering Serling before today’s Zoom call, and I’m pondering him after it too.
Related film: Ruby Sparks (2012), a film about a novelist who imagines a woman who comes to life, and hijinks ensue.
