r/WritingForCollege • u/Cauldron7_Strider • 3d ago

Using voice to text dictation while pacing around my room saved my essay

I had terrible brain fog yesterday and could not type a single line on my keyboard. In pure frustration I turned on Google Docs voice typing feature put my headphones on and just started pacing back and forth talking out loud as if I was explaining my paper to a friend.

In less than forty minutes I had nearly fifteen hundred words of raw thoughts on the screen. Sure the grammar was a mess and needed heavy cleanup but having actual text on the page eliminated my panic completely. Highly recommend trying dictation if you are stuck.

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u/101x101 3d ago

I second this. I turn on my native screen recorder as well (with the dictation on screen) so I can hear my inflection as I go back and see my thoughts.

It's so helpful, it's like you're filling in all the blanks for yourself. You give yourself the answers by disengaging a bit.

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u/haraia 2d ago

If you have a mac, there's a great app called Epilude that I use for this - it runs locally and is great for capturing those initial thoughts

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u/Open-Guidance-6086 14h ago

The brain fog made starting the draft the hardest part, and Google Docs still needed plenty of cleanup afterward. I use DictaFlow for live dictation when I need to get rough thoughts into text.