Writing in the Car- Voice Journal App

Yesterday was a long car day. I usually do some good thinking for books while driving, and wanted to be sure I didn't lose what I thought up, so I went looking for a free speech to text app. I tried the Voice Journal App for Android. It works, but right now, I'm giving it three stars and looking for something else to try.

I had the basic plot of then next Anastasia Raven mystery in my head. It will be Dead Mule Swamp Mistletoe, a Christmas mystery. But I thought I could flesh out the characters and their motives to dislike the person who dies. After a day of devious plotting, I think I'm going to like this book.

Voice Journal was pretty simple to use. Maybe too simple in terms of options. You can give entries a title. Then you just touch RECORD to bring up the text pad. You can actually do a text entry or touch the microphone to speak.


There doesn't seem to be a limit to the length of file you can make, since I recorded on and off all day. The accuracy of what was in the text is better than marginal, but not great. I can figure out what I said, but won't be doing much cut and paste to save excerpts.

It seemed like all you could see of your input was in that little central slice, but learned later after I wasn't driving that you can see more, to be able to scroll and read by using the back arrow at the bottom of the screen (the phone triangle one).

The black arrow that says Entry Details takes you back to the screen with all your entries.


Since the first one was a test run, I wanted to delete it. That doesn't seem to be a possibility.

You can email the text file to anyone in your contacts, send to dropbox, facebook, or lots of other choices in your own app list. Do this by touching the EXPORT label. I chose to send it to dropbox, where it appeared as a txt file.

I made this really small on purpose so you can't read it. It's full of spoilers, but you can see that it's just one huge block of text. There's a period wherever I paused, which was often. Odd names throw it for a loop.


At any rate, I made some good progress on a book instead of losing all that stupid driving time.

One really bad thing- I didn't push stop when I was finished one time, and Google Maps- which I was using for driving directions stopped talking to me. This was really bad in a traffic jam around Nashville! I discovered what had happened because all my comments (yeah, I talk to myself) made while trying to get the map to talk appeared in the text file for Voice Journal!

New Computer, No Time

It's real... I have my new laptop. But, I'm also getting ready to leave town for a week. It will be going along, but I'll be hiking and attending a conference. There will be some writing taking place, but it will all be pretty frantic.

I'm just glad that the computer is ready to go. I think I've got all the critical stuff loaded on it. And if I don't.... well, most critical things turn out to be not so critical if there is nothing you can do about them.

How Chained to the Keyboard?

My laptop computer (only 3 years old) died completely on Monday. Not good timing. Is there ever good timing for this?

Frankly, I haven't done any real writing all week. My desktop, that I used to think was speedy, feels like a tortoise, and I can't make myself sit there and wait for it.

I used to say that my brains flowed out the end of a pen onto paper, and I wasn't sure I could make the transition to using a computer keyboard. Although I was a good typist, a typewriter was never my preferred method to write. However, I quickly adapted to a keyboard-- a long time ago.

Now, this week, I can't make myself write by hand. A new laptop is ordered and I should have it today or tomorrow.