Now that you are retired or soon to be retired, you will have plenty of time to do the things you have always wanted to do but never got around to it.
Things like writing perhaps?.
Maybe you have been harbouring a lifelong desire to be an author, to write and publish your own book.
Or maybe you are a natural at putting words together and you want to make some extra money in your retirement and think that writing would be right for you.
But due to complaints such as rheumatoid arthritis or slow typing, the idea of writing for a living might seem unattainable for you.
Think again.
The year is 2020 and the technology we have at our disposal is incredible if not miraculous.
How many people have an Amazon Alexa or a Google Home in their homes?
The number of home gadgets and apps which are voice controlled and voice activated has exploded recently. But it doesn’t stop there… writing software has evolved to the point that you can write without ever having to touch a keyboard or keypad.
Speech-to-text software has evolved to the point where you can write an article in half the time it takes to type. Depending on how good you are at thinking up the words and mentally structuring sentences of course.
But, the technology is here.
Talking Yourself Onto The New York Times Best Sellers List
Some of the best selling authors write by recording their words. The bestselling science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson takes himself off for long backpacking trips in the wilderness and as he walks he talks into a small recorder.
He writes a story as he walks, and rumour has it that he can churn out 15-20,000 words a day while hiking and that 90% of it is usable. So it requires little editing. He records audio and uses a professional transcriber to turn it into an editable format.
Many authors will use software like Dragon Naturally Speaking which is a speech-to-text software, others will send their recordings off to be transcribe by an online transcription service like Rev.com
This is not new, many of our classic authors used transcribers to type up the words they spoke. Churchill himself used a personal assistant to type up his speeches as he thought them up.
Many women were employed to put the words to paper, some even added parts and edited as they worked for the great authors. It wasn’t just a case of transcribing what they heard. Unfortunately many of them were never credited or thanked for their contribution or help in putting together books which to this day are heralded as classics.
Copywriters regularly talk out their sales letters into recording equipment because conversational English is regarded as the best for many types of written media. More on this later.
Dragon Naturally Speaking is an incredible software but it isn’t cheap. There are other alternatives with some of them being free.
Walking To The Bank Using Free Speech-To-Text Software
Google Docs is one such software and it is pretty impressive to say the least. It has it’s little hiccups but on the whole, for a free software it is exceptional. With Google products being cloud based and accessible across all of your devices, using Google Docs to write in is perfect for writing for clients.
Not only can you write and easily share your content with people by sharing a link, removing the need to attach documents to emails or uploading them, but you can write in Google Docs using their excellent speech-to-text software.
This is excellent because it means that you can go out for a walk and write. The mobile phone app connects to the microphone on your phone and allows you to talk-write.
With the document open and in the edit mode click on the microphone icon to start the recorder.
When the recorder is on, simply talk into the phone and watch as your words – or 85-90% of them – are correctly converted into text and appear in the doc.
When you have finished or when you are taking a pause to think of what to say next, press the pause button.
It is so simple.
Taking the dog for a walk or enjoying a hike around the local beauty spots can become a pleasurable and profitable past time.
To make it easier, you can invest in a cheap clip-on lapel microphone for your phone which can be bought from Amazon or eBay for as little as £10.50.
I myself have written over 2000 words while doing a 20 minute walk. That was one productive and profitable walk. I have written for money in the past, and so walking and talking is a great way to get a lot of useful content into a usable format.
With the Google Docs being cloud based, you will see that what you add to the doc on your phone, it will be ready for you to edit on your laptop or tablet when you get home. To be completely honest, you can edit and complete the whole article on your phone if you wish.
I think it’s easier to edit on a laptop personally. Unless you are brilliant at thinking up sentences which are perfect and great at using the correct grammar commands while you speak, your content will require some editing. This is a given, but at least editing is a lot easier on the fingers than typing.
In the past I have been paid to write articles as little as 300 words.That is not a lot of words. A brief walk with a couple of cards with notes of things to include in your articles will allow you to get down all the words you will need to make money.
You do not have to go for a walk though.
You can find a comfortable quiet spot in your house or sit at the laptop in front of a quality microphone plugged into your laptop or desktop. It doesn’t really matter how you do it, what is important is that you talk and get as many quality words and sentences down as you can.
As with everything in life, the more you do the better you will become.
Using free tools is the best way if you are only writing content which you will only get paid a few pounds for.
But if you were to offer your services as a copywriter writing sales copy which converts readers into buyers for which you can be paid hundreds and thousands of pounds per piece then you may decide to invest some money and use a better system.
Several writers and copywriters record audio files which they then upload them up to a transcription service called Rev.com.
Rev.com has a team of writers around the world who will transcribe your audio recording into a workable text document which they will email to you when it is finished. If you recorded the audio file while out on a walk, the document of the whole recording can often be sat in your inbox waiting for you before you have returned home.
Rev.com charges US$1 per minute. With many highly paid writers recording audio files of 30 – 45 minutes long, they pay less than $50 to have written up content which they can then craft into articles or sales copy which they charge hundreds or thousands of pounds for.
It is ironic that premium paid writers use cheaper writers to do the hard work for them. They tidy and tickle up the piece then send it on to their clients when they have finished for a nice tidy sum.
Copywriting is a very well paid form of writing. It is a skill which can be learned with study and practice. The real good copywriters can earn millions from writing sales letters. Several copywriters record the bulk of what they want to say then edit the document later.
There are several benefits for doing this:
- The best sales copy is often conversational and so by talking out loud into a recorder as if you were talking to a potential customer is a great way to start building up your sales copy.
- You can dump loads of ideas into a document without having to think about editing and when the time comes to do the editing you approach it with a clear mind and a fresh set of eyes.
- You can generally say more in a shorter time period than you can type so talking about a product can speed up the whole process a lot.
Here is the video of writing by talking using Google Docs, a mobile phone and a laptop.
How To Supplement Your Pension Being Paid To Write Without Using Your Hands
The Google Doc from that video is here: Click The Image Below To Access It
