I only wrote about 300 words today. I had two good reason for it. First, this is the last day of the week, and I am way ahead with my quota. I was technically at my weekly goal on Wednesday. Second, I desperately needed to do some writing business and productivity stuff. Third, I have a beta reader looking at my most recent time travel short story, and I would rather not start anything new until she gets back to me, because that will interrupt my flow if I start a new story and have to stop to review the old one.
So, I’m taking a “writing” day off today. But you guys know me: a day off isn’t really a day off because I spent most of it working with data.
First, I developed a new automated way to transcribe my files about 90 percent faster and in a more organized fashion.
Before today, here was my dictation workflow:
• I dictated the file.
• I connected my voice recorder to my computer.
• I opened Dragon, selected the proper file, and then waited for it to transcribe the file. I could reasonably expect transcription to take approximately 20 percent of the file’s total length.
• I copied the text into Microsoft word.
• Rinse and repeat for each file.
Naturally, if I have a few big files, you can see how this would be time-consuming.
I have been aware of the Dragon Auto Transcription Agent for some time, but I never set aside the time to configure it until today. The Auto Transcription Agent automatically transcribes files in a folder for you, and it runs so much faster. The trick is getting the file into the right directory.
I found a program called Hazel, which copies all my files from my voice recorder to a designated folder on my computer. The Auto Transcription Agent then immediately transcribes the recordings into plain text files. At that point, I just have to copy and paste the text into Microsoft Word. I even figured out a way to combine all text files in a directory into a single file so that I only have to copy and paste once.
I know, it’s super boring and technical, but it’s a major game changer and a timesaver because I dictate so frequently throughout the day that my old process was time-consuming and tedious. This will help me do things faster.
The second thing I worked on today was some data regarding short stories. As many of you know, I have decided to do the Ray Bradbury challenge, meaning I must write 52 short stories in a year. I am already at six.
I have no problem coming up with ideas for short stories, but secretly, I am afraid that I will write the same story over and over without realizing it. I need some ways to think outside of the box and push my creativity to write different types of characters, different types of settings, and different types of situations. Today, I explored some ways to potentially do that.
I don’t know how many people have heard of the following tools that I am going to describe, but from what I can tell, these tools were used by many of the pulp masters.
The first tool is called Plotto. Plotto was written in the 1920s by William Wallace Cook as a way for authors to generate compelling plots for their stories. If you’ve never seen Plotto, you owe it to yourself to check out the book. It’s in the public domain, so you don’t have to pay anything for it. It is amazingly complicated and not at all easy or intuitive to understand. Every few years, I pull out Plotto to see if it is any easier for me to understand, and I always walk away shaking my head.
But this time, I thought, “what if somebody turned this into software and updated it for modern times?” it’s a fascinating idea, but the execution is rather lousy.
That question led me to another book written in the 1930s by Wycliff A. Hill called “Plot Genie.” Plot Genie is essentially the same concept as Plotto, but it’s much easier to use. It works by giving you a plot formula and a list of different components for each formula element. You then match those elements together by spinning a physical wheel that comes with the book. Spinning a physical wheel isn’t possible these days, so you can simply pick random numbers and still use the formula.
The interesting thing about Plot Genie is that the author wrote several supplemental formulas: action-adventure, romance, mysteries, and even short stories. When you read the books, you get the sense that the author spent a lot of time thinking about anything and everything that could happen in a story in the 1920s and 1930s, but it is still outdated. That said, it is still better than Plotto.
Using basic Excel and data knowledge, I extracted the lists from Plot Genie into Microsoft Excel and built a series of formulas that essentially do what spinning the physical wheel would have done back in the 1930s. Within about an hour, I was generating the same types of plots that pulp writers in the 1930s would have used. Very fascinating…
The next question I had was, “could I keep the Plot Genie Formula but update the components?” Some of the suggestions were outdated and, honestly, a little racist. I then went down a rabbit hole on Google to find updated lists for things like science fiction and fantasy settings, villain motivations, character motivations, and so on. Another hour later, I had a more contemporary and workable Plot Genie. I started generating plots that were mysterious, intriguing, and funny. Some were downright jarring and silly.
I then compared the Plot Genie formula with the Lester Dent formula (another common pulp formula that I use for my short stories), and I found that while the two methods are different, you could reconcile them and get them to play nicely together with a little bit of elbow grease.
Then, I created a spreadsheet that generated a combined Lester Dent and Plot Genie plot formula with elements from both methods. With the click of a button, I generated interesting plots.
As I was doing this, I thought, “Gee, this is a lot like automated outlining.” I didn’t like that, so I only had the Excel sheet generate an idea for the first 1200 words of the story, which is essentially a hero in a setting with a problem, and the introduction of a villain and supporting characters. I figured if my formula could generate at least that, that could be an interesting jumping-off point for me to write more interesting and literarily diverse short stories as I start growing my portfolio over the coming weeks.
If I ever don’t know what to write, I can use this tool as an insurance policy. This will help me keep the words coming in on time. That’s the key, especially when you want to write 52 short stories in a year and/or 1 million words in a year. You need tools that can help you keep charging forward. So that’s why I spent so much time working on that today.
See, this is what I do when I’m not writing…
I did manage to write about 300 words today, which was an afterword for one of my short stories.
Anyway, I did about 25,000 words this week, and the counter resets tomorrow, which means I will be back to writing 2750 per day words again. Now that I have a more streamlined voice recorder transcription process and another way to generate interesting short story ideas, I should be able to hit the ground running tomorrow.
Have a good night.
YTD Word Count: 166,800
Plan: 1,252,000
Words Left to Write 1,085,200
Words Over/-Under Plan: 32,050
Days Ahead/-Behind: 11.65
Projected Annual Word Count: 1,242,490
Projected Decade Word Count: 12,424,898
Deadline 12/31/2023
Days to Go Until 12/31/23: 442
Word Count Average: 3,404
Average Pulp Speed: 1.9
