Friday Forays in Fiction: Friction 'tween Artist and Machine

For the last three days I've been having adventures with the Speech Recognition ap on my Aspire laptop.  Wednesday I'd got the 'bright' idea that I would have a better chance of reaching my 50K if I could just talk and let the computer type it.

Ha.  Shows what I know.

It might work once I've taught the ap to recognize my speech patterns and all the special words for my story world.  That's probably going to take weeks or even months of steady practice stopping to correct every mistake immediately.  Which is not a good way to stay in that dreamy place where the story lives.  It means inviting the editor harpies in when they are least wanted or needed.

I did get over 8K words in under 3 hours but I can't really use more than 15% of them for the NaNo draft.  It consisted mostly of me saying the same word or phrase over and over in hopes it would show up right or enough so I could expect to recognize it next week or next month.

That eventually devolved into me talking back to the ap calling it names and saying things like:

• I did not say that.
• What?
• NO
• That's not right
• How did you get _____ out of _____
• This isn't going to work is it?
• Oh am I talking too slow?  Try to keep up with this
• Are you even listening to me?
• And you're supposed to be assistive?
• You doofus!
• Are you retarded?
• What planet are you from? 
• Ah so you can get planet right as long as I'm not talking about Mourna's planet.
• Give me a break
• You are garbling every word
• NO NO NO NOT gargling furry worms
• nope not Greta Garbo forms either
• not gobbling 4 warm seas
• I said you are garbling every word
• NO NOT gambling better or worse
• nor gurgling ovary womb.
• OMG You are incorrigible!  CHEW ON THAT ONE

That last as I left the room to go eat turkey dinner with the family Thursday evening.  When I read what was typed later I found the word incorrigible correct but little else of my parting lines.

Thursday evening when Ed and I started our vid chat I was getting no audio and he suggested I close the speech ap and as I fussed with it I was talking to it just like before when I was alone not realizing he had fine audio as well as picture. I was loud, animated and snarky,

When I returned to the Gmail Talk screen he was cracking up.  That's when I started wishing I had a video recording of the hour or two exchange between me and the ap before dinner Thursday.  I bet it would go viral if I uploaded it.

Below, for your amusement, I've taken the first 600 or so words of the old draft of the story I'm doing for NaNo, broken it down to phrases short enough to fit on one line (I hope here too) and then one by one I placed the cursor under the line and read the line aloud.  After the ap typed it's version, I moved the cursor under the next line.  And so forth.

It's actually doing better here than with the rambling thoughts I was using before.  But this is also done after I started teaching it names for people, places and things.  You should have seen me trying to get it to get Mourna or mourning mother,  or wailing womb right the first day.



Warm is his body and alive.
Warm ease his body and Mary

Secure in my arms, next to my heart, my son.
Secure and my arms weeks to my heart my some

Soft and supple his skin, deep and dazzling his eyes.
Soft and supple and skin guy and that's just one

Blue eyes that gaze into mine.
Allies that gains and to move

Soul to soul a bond of love is forged.
Soul to sollemn or bombed of mountains form

Stronger than the strongest steel.
Stromberg and the strongest below

More enduring than diamonds.
More and during the Indonesians


To hold him, to touch him, to kiss his rosy cheeks,
To hold them to touch cancers Wilson cheeks

to caress the smooth skin, to lay my finger gently on his throat
To caress the SMS king and Tulane receiver Jon Ley norms to

and feel the pulsing of his tiny veins
Until the close and Kingston Womb's

and know that life is in him and that life from me.
And all that life is an him and that might be

Passionately possessive I feel, ferociously protective.
Passionately incessantly of motions to

No harm shall come to him.  I will prevent it with my life.
No harm shall come to him or will prevent it was more like


He is mine and only mine, I think, and yet know that he is his own
He is among the OM-and that No-one to use his own

and the Womb’s above all.
In the Womb's and of all

 And sooner than I wish he will break free
In Sudan and I wish and we're treating


into the private world of his own soul.  He will assert his independence,
And as a private moment is Womb's shall most surgeons and an


leave my arms empty and yearning once more,
Leave my arms and to nine months.


declaring his dominion over the earth as all men have since the Advent.
Declaring his dominion over bars their zone in Iraq since the advent


But for now he belongs only to me
Walter now he belongs only to me


and the union of our souls is more passionate,
And the human reversals is more passion

more galvanic than that between a man and a woman,
More durable than the market and random

more profound than that between a soul and its Augmentor.
More profoundly not that of the sollemn often

***********************

Mourna awoke.
Mourna will

Tears washed out from beneath her lashes as she blinked her eyes open.
Tears were still were when the two lashes and she went to wrestle

Dreaming again.  Such strange dreams.
To remain in which drains during

Thoughts so foreign to her
Not so foreign to

 that even the images and words used to form them
The league and the images and words used to form an

had a strange feel to her as the dregs of the dream floated in her mind.
I was strange filter and some traits of the gym will that one

Augmentor.  She formed the strange word silently with her tongue.
Augmentor sheet from the strange words sound have come

The word did not belong to her.  But she still felt the emotion it conjured up.
The warden of the winter she still throw them in motion the computer

Awe and utter trust.
On a interest

And beneath that was the straining of energies harnessed and directed….
in banni they are was a string of human genes arms and directed


The images were fading.
The images were fading

She could never hang onto them for more
She could never hang on to them for more

than the moments it took her to come fully awake.
Then the moment a checker becomes only way

All that was left was the feel of an infant’s supple skin
A lot was left was a human being and supple skin and

and blue eyes gazing into hers.
A blue eyes gaze and others

And with these a feeling of desolation washed over her.
And of these issue in consolation were still

She came fully awake then, crying out,
Seeking fully awake and Karen L

"My baby.  Oh my son, I want my son."
My baby Only son of workplace and


And with the sound of her own cry
And while the sound of her own party

she remembered, and knew she would never see him again.
She remembered and then she would never see them even

A wave of desolation inundated her.
All or even desolation media are

Even now Jamyl could be dead.
The amount to milk the tour

 But no, somehow Mourna was sure
But no hot summer murder was sure

 that she would know when Jamyl no longer lived.
When she would know when gene Wunderlich

There was a bond between them,
There was a bond between

indefinable but indestructible.
Indefinable that investor

It had been there almost from the moment she became aware
It had been the wrong was from the moment she became aware

that life was growing within her.
That life was going in and

Jamyl had been torn from her arms,
John build up in tone arm around

had been banished from the Body.
Kevin bannished from the body


But only death could truly separate them.
That only god can truly separate and

 And that death would come soon for Jamyl.
And that doesn't come some regional

A matter of hours.
A matter of hours

And with his death total desolation of soul for Mourna.
And with his dad told us wish and sold them mournign

Her soul wailed within her
We're so well with them

and instinctively she put her hands to her belly
And it's taken when she commands to grow

where so recently he had lain curled.
We're so recently have rankled

A slight swelling still remained
This rights will instill in range

to testify to the truth of his existence.
To testify to retrieve the present system

There was an ache in her womb and an emptiness.
There was a naked woman in Kings

She felt the emptiness consuming her.
She felt being and is consuming for

Could she survive the death of Jamyl?
Can she survived the cut that amount

Did she want to?
Teach you want to

NO!  the answer screamed within her heart
No-one the answer screened within the report

like the cold winds of the Season of the Far Suns.
Like a cold winds of the season of that are signs

She must hold her son in her arms again or die!
She was older son and her arms again old daughter

With that thought she sprang to a sitting position on her sleep-couch,
With that thought she spread to a sitting position numbers retur

every muscle tense, every sense alert.
Every muscle tents and son to work

She must rescue Jamyl!
She must rescue Jamyl