What if You Can’t Type?

AKA Get Your Words Out

Most writers I know “write” their books via typing into a word processing program on a computer. I know one who prefers pen on paper. A lot of them have blogs, where they “write” even more words. I jot down notes on paper, but do most of my “writing” using Pages on my MacBook.

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Tonight I spent the evening talking with my boyfriend’s father about a non-fiction book proposal he is working on. He is an amazing speaker. His academic and professional credentials are top notch.

He has great difficulty typing. It slows him down to the point he doesn’t do it. He’ll have his youngest son type out replies to online forums as he dictates. He uses Dragon Naturally Speaking and then works with someone else’s hands on the keyboard to clean up the manuscript.

Suggesting he maintain a blog to help create his author’s platform is self-defeating.

Assuming the blog contained written entries.

My recommendation was audio or video posts.

If video, have YouTube host the files, create a subscription page and put the code for the video into his blog post on his own domain. A dedicated weekend could create enough posts for several weeks which could then be uploaded and set to publish on specific days. Now he can maintain a blog and begin to expand the online aspect of his author’s platform.

If audio, find out how to have the podcast available through iTunes.

There are many ways to get your words out. Keep trying different things and talking to different people until you find out what works for you.

Stuffed Chameleon: Get her words out.
- Wonderfalls

Nov 12, 2009

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Categories: writing