My Most Valuable Secret for Writing Hypnosis Scripts,
Articles and Books
By Rene A. Bastarache, CI
Most of you that know me realize that I love to talk but I don’t like typing very much. Realizing this I get lots of inquiries as to how I create so much content. So here’s the secret to my content creation madness and it’s something that you can use as well. Since I don’t like typing very much I use what is known as “voice recognition software” to do all my typing for me.
The product I use specifically is called “Dragon Naturally Speaking” by Nuance.
Once you’ve downloaded you can then speak to your computer over a microphone and it will type out everything as you’re speaking in real time. The beauty of this is that most people speak much faster than they type and it’s easier to keep focused on your trend of thought without having to slow down your thoughts by typing.
With voice recognition software the computer will transcribe everything I say as quickly as I speak as long as I speak and follow a few simple rules. What are the rules you may ask? You need to speak clearly as you dictate because if you say a word that sounds similar to the word you really want due to mumbling or a momentary slur the computer may recognize and type the similar word that is the wrong one. For instance it may type the word “hand” rather than “and”.
This may not seem like a big problem at first glance however since the similar sounding word that the computer recognizes is an actual word it will not be noticed by your spellchecker and occasionally the similar sounding word may be something that gives your paragraph a completely different meaning than you intended. An example of this is when I initially wrote my first hypnosis manual I reference the term “depth test” five or six times within the text. The problem is that rather than the program transcribing the words “depth test” it typed the words “death test”. Since there was no spell-check alerting me to the problem everything seemed fine and I had the book published.
About five or six months down the road I began having graduates emailing us asking what a death test was as I was referring to it often throughout the manual. Of course I was confused as to what they meant and when I reviewed the manual I was shocked to see what had happened. I’ve since then corrected the problem and have filed it in my “life’s most embarrassing moments” file.
In spite of those type bloopers I still find the use of voice recognition software priceless to my business. In fact this article you’re reading right now was dictated using voice recognition software. I’m actually sitting in front of my computer, looking out the window enjoying the scenery and dictating this article at the same time. It makes many of my projects so much more enjoyable.
By the way I’m not endorsing this product for any type of financial gain as I am not an affiliate nor associated with them in any way other than I own the product myself. There are similar products on the market in addition to Dragon Naturally Speaking but the Dragon seems to have the highest accuracy rate of about 98%. Unfortunately it is only a PC program and not available for Mac that I know of. Mac however does offer a similar program called Dictate which also has an accuracy rate in the 90% area.
For those of you that come up with your most creative thoughts while you’re on the road there’s a few online telephone voice recognition apps that can be downloaded for free. Just do a search for voice recognition apps and see what’s available for your specific phone. The great thing about having it available on a cell phone is that you can record the ideas that you’re having at the specific moment and e-mail them to your computer to later print out on your word processor. If you’d rather not use a voice recognition app directly on your cell phone you can always just record your voice on most digital recorders and then download the recording directly into your computer’s voice recognition software so it can be transcribed directly to print.
So for those of you that do like to create content for your webpages or write articles or books you may find it quite useful to look into using voice recognition software. It may not be a good solution if you only write once in a while but if it’s something you do on a regular basis I think you’ll find it cost effective. Most of the programs that I’ve seen cost anywhere from $80-$120 and usually come with the headset/microphone included in the package.
The only downfall I found about using voice recognition software is that I tend to ramble on a little longer than I would if I were strictly typing directly to the computer. Like I said at the beginning of the article, I love to talk and when you’re using voice recognition software the article you’re writing reads exactly the way you would normally speak.
If this is something that you use already go ahead and leave us a comment below as to what you use it for and how helpful it’s been to your business. The more ideas we can share, the more helpful it will be to our readers. If you haven’t used it before and were motivated to try it as a result of this article please leave us a comment about your progress.
To your success!