In the Trenches: Tappity

I have discovered I have a problem, a serious problem. I’ve mentioned it before. In short, I am a lousy typist.

I am so bad at typing that I actively avoid doing it, even to text.

Recently I have been trying to teach my Windows computer to type what I speak. Well, either the text to voice is (ahem*) sub-optimal or it can’t deal with my Appalachian accent. I blame the computer.

Seriously, I blame the computer. I can’t tell you how many hours (yes, plural) reading their (seriously boring) script, over and over into the computer with the goal of teaching the little internal gnomes how to recognize what I say.

It is so slow. The recognition appears to be accurate, that’s good, but the gnomes are shod in lead as they tap dance over the keyboard. The lag is enough to drive me to the point of saying forget this and starting to type.

That should tell you just how terrible this *feature operates. I, who loathes to type, would rather type than wrestle with the computer to have it hobble its way through the task for me.

Seriously, this is technology. I don’t want a flying car. I don’t need automatic credit or financial access. I don’t even need my refrigerator to talk to me. Seriously, don’t make my refrigerator talk, that’s just a bad idea. But, dang it. I want the ability to talk to my computer and have it do the typing.

C’mon people. Focus on the things that are really going to prove useful.

I have tried almost every iteration of electronic paper and dictation software. Nada. There is one thing out there that I really want to try, a BOOX Note Air2 Plus, Max Lumi2, or Tab Ultra. You can convert handwriting into text with these devices. The converted file is in either PNG, PDF, or TXT format.

And that, right up there, is the key to all of this.

You see most of the handwriting capture devices give you a PNG file. And that’s the problem. Sure, you have your notes in a nice pretty image, but you can’t use that image in any word processing program. It’s a singular image, not individual characters. So, for editing your work a PNG file is, what’s that word… oh, useless.

That is where the BOOX excels. It gives you a PDF file, that’s good. But it also can produce a TXT file. Hallelujah. Text that you can drop into virtually anything.

I repeat. Hallelujah.

And looking at my bank account and back to the price… Yeah, that isn’t happening anytime soon. *Insert much frustrated language.

Because, ^*&)(^, I have to go type. And this is the problem. I’m finding that the need to type out what I have already written, long-hand, is a major deterrent to me writing anything. 

And these days, that is a serious problem. I have blog posts, short stories, the next novel to write in my series, a Southern manners novel to write, a family novel, and two other short stories to adapt. And I’m not doing any of it, other than the blog posts, because I am dreading the reality of having to sit down and do all that d*mn typing.

So, if you find yourself reading this, and you happen to want to help a broke novelist write, and you happen to not mind people begging for things in public then some help would be nice.

Trust me, I am not holding my breath. The things that fall out of the sky and land at my feet are invariably not beneficial.

So here I am, mightily put out. And not having a single way to get the problem solved, except by the very irritating necessity to get out of my own way and stop whining.