Battling the Dragon

I am learning to adapt my writing process from typing to dictating through Dragon Naturally Speaking software. Dragon is very helpful but ...

I say "My sister mothered me," and it types "My sister bothered me." I say "enunciation" and it types "NCAA sin." I say "air kisses with super loud" and it types "Eric kisses with sick birds allowed."

I am not make you dish it out. Correction: I’m not making this shit up.

I check the settings on my microphone and wonder if people are lying to me when they say my NCAA sin sounds normal again.

I found the mistakes so distracting at first, I had to go back and correct them right away. But then I lost my flow. So I tried writing with my eyes closed. By the time I opened them again, I had no way of reconstructing what I'd said.

Eyes open, I have learned not to swear out loud at these errors. Or I get something that looks like this: Eric kisses with sick birds allowed God dammit!

I have learned to pause and turn off the microphone before responding to my husband’s knock on my office door, or I get bizarre renditions of one-sided conversations.

The soft hiss of my breathing against the microphone often appears as "him him him him … ."

I have learned to speak punctuation and capital letters as a natural part of my dictation: open quote I close quote often becomes open quote cap A close quote period. Translation: "I" often becomes "A".

Forget playing the PNO, forget breeding my niece’s hair! A just want to type!