Did you November is National Novel Writing Month (hence, NaNoWrimo). NaNoWrimo is an interesting approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1 and end November 30. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word). This requires you to write a minimum of 1,667 words a day which can be very daunting. This is why using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for NaNoWrimo would take some of the pressure off. I know my sister would love to write a novel one day. It is honestly her lifelong dream. She went to college and majored in English, so she could do it. However, she is super busy (and this is before she even has kids!). When I learned about Dragon Naturally Speaking, I knew this would be a perfect fit for her. This can definitely help her blogging (of course, she is a blogger too!). However, I personally don’t think she thinks she has the time for something of this magnitude.
If you want to see how this would help you, you have to take the Dragon’s typing speed test! I tried it with Will (my 16 month old) hanging on me (so I really do type faster, but this is what my life is like normally. That is why blogging usually takes me all day. LOL Here’s my test results:
Let me tell you, I couldn’t believe how fast the speaker was compared to my typing. Granted, I could have typed faster without Will, but I still couldn’t have kept up with the speaker. There is no way. I think I know what I am buying my sister for Christmas. She has some big changes coming her way and this would allow her to both continue blogging and to write her novel.
I may not be writing a novel, but man, I can see so many uses for myself with this software. Since I have five blogs and two little kids, I could definitely get more work done with this versus me typing out my blog posts (see score up above – lol). This would make it much easier to write posts for my travel blog when we are on the road, and I could write my posts for my cooking blog while I am cooking the recipe I am going to write about. I could take the time I save and spend it with my family instead of working. It would be nice to be able to go to bed before midnight. Do you want to see how easy this is to use?
As you can see, anyone can use this software. It is that easy. Don’t believe me? Read some of these Dragon Reviews. I actually know people who have this and they absolutely love it. I am still working on getting my hands on one of these, so I can save some of my precious time.
I've been practicing with Dragon Naturally Speaking and it's awesome. Even my 95 year old 'Pop' is able to use it!
If my math is correct @ 150 wpm you could write 9000 words per hour. 50,000 words divided by 9000 equals….. something like 5 1/2 hours to write the 'NaNoWrimo'. (Okay, with breaks and corrections, it might take double that!).
Whew, I don't know if I could think of a 50,000 word story to write – but for someone who is a prolific writer, DNS would be an amazing tool to get this project on track! 😀
The only downside I can find is the thing simply does not work if your CPU doesn't have the SSE2 Instruction set. Mine doesn't and it's not likely to be replaced with one that does anytime soon.
I've done NaNoWriMo for the last 6 years. I just received my copy of Dragon 10. I'm going to install it and see how well it works.
It's good to know that you found it helpful.
Mark, a good friend of mine had told me that the DNS is definitely the ultimate choice to all types of people, no matter you're a newbie or expert in the writing profession!
Okay….so how did everyone do on the test? I am sloooooooooow…. 😥
It is not so perfect, but the best solution I found…so still the must 🙂