Tag Archives: Tools

Toolbox Fallacy

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It’s still weird to me to have my words translated onto a page by way of a microphone. This sort of thing is going to take some getting used to. I need to learn to speak louder and more clearly when I do these things. Having said that, I hope to be able to create many more words very quickly over the next few weeks.

Oddly, when I’m speaking into the microphone like this, the flow of consciousness helps me to organize thoughts. Sometimes, however, one thing that it does is make other thoughts and other patterns of memory more evident. I was telling somebody the other day about the toolbox fallacy. Is this a philosophy?  Perhaps it’s a school of thought? Is that the same thing?

Anyway, the thought here is that people who are creators, in whatever form they create,  simply create. The tools are just that, tools. If I want to say that I am a writer, I should write.This should mean that I write without regard to what tools are available to me. If I need to use a marker and a napkin, or a piece of cardboard at work and a pencil, whatever it is, if I have an idea I should be writing.  Editing, compiling, composing all of those things come after. The most important piece is the actual creation. Get words on a page. If the page is blank, there’s nothing to react to.

The caveat here is, I need the time in my schedule to actually sit and make these things  happen. I’m hoping as we move forward through the end of this year that I will be able to make more time for my creative pursuits. I really do want to finish the first full novel that I have been writing for a very long time. I have world building, I have characters, I have story arc, I have villains, I have plot twists, but what I don’t have are words on a page. Hell, I’ve got as much “marketing tool writing” as I do actual, written story. Can’t buy it if it’s not actually there.

 So, I’m going to take this stream of consciousness as a starting point, remembering the toolbox fallacy, and try to create more and get these words out of my head faster so that I have something on a page that I can then go and edit and say yes I have completed this thing.

 I’ve stated this before, but I’m hopeful that perhaps, this time it will stick. Only time will tell.

Check out this video – it’s part of what stuck in my head about making my work real:

New / Old Tool

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I’m going to test out an old/new tool again. I had tried using voice to text previously and one of the things that slowed me down was always the amount of time that it took to edit these things.  There’s no way to actually say, “hey that’s the end of a sentence”. The Voice to Text tool will actually spell out the word. Punctuation is the bane of voice to text. Pauses are not recognized.

Interestingly enough I think someone complained about that and if you pause long enough you can actually say. and get that actual result (see how that worked right there?)

I’m going to try this again. I can speak faster than I can type. The real question is how much editing do I need to do when all is said and done. I think it will be an interesting experiment. It will force me to look at the words that I create in a much more conversational format as well as giving them something of a flow that they might not have otherwise.

Maybe I get these stories, these words, these things to come crashing together faster and hope the editing process is easy. Maybe I get results that amount to a stream of consciousness that don’t really work out as good stories. Hopefully one of the things that I can do is make this stream of consciousness thing work for me and use my ability to tell a good story to actually create a good story on a page. Typing in this way, which isn’t really typing, I suppose I should at least be able to pull together words faster and more completely than I could do in a traditional typing manner. If I’m lucky I will be able to produce more, and do it more quickly.

I think this is going to be at least, in part, something that I’m going to have to learn and I’m going to have to spend time working with. Based on an articleI read recently, it was suggested that what I really need to do is learn to live with an absolutely terrible first draft. I tend to want my story to come out as close to finished as it can right from the start. I don’t like the editing process. Not that I think anyone likes the editing process, the editing process sucks.

This is the test and we’ll see if my production speed goes up. One of the things I really need to get better at is my speed. There are so many things going on that I really need to make the best use of my time and use tools that maybe I wouldn’t have thought were positive or useful or even for me. We’ll see how it goes.

Time to edit this post because I can already see a giant mess.

Do you have any tools that are your favorites? What tools help your productivity?