Adventures With Dragon

Last night, I finished typing Michelle's re-write manuscript of her book, Blackboard. I've been working on it on and off for the past couple of weeks, and it's a favor I was glad to do for Michelle.
She has fibromyalgia, which is a chronic illness characterized by nearly-constant pain and fatigue, so she's unable to sit at her computer and write for an extended length of time. Despite this physical challenge, she is still one of the most creative people I know. She's even more inspired and productive than she was when she was healthier.
She not only has many books and stories in various stages of completion (like me) but she's finished her first re-write of Blackboard, and she's done a great job shaping it into a unique and appealing book for middle-grade kids. She's a very prolific poet, too, of dozens and dozens of poems. Some are featured on the website, Deviant Art (www.deviantart.com/saintslove) She also co-edits an online/print childrens' magazine, Whimsy, with Kathy, who she had worked with in the childrens' department at the b.s. Their years of experience working with children and childrens' books is reflected in a fun and informative publication for kids and parents - it features reviews, articles, games and artwork by Michelle and Kathy, as well as stories and illustrations from many talented contributors (adults and kids) from all over. (www.writewhimsy.com)
Michelle's multi-talented as well - she does illustrative drawing, and she's an ardent cross-stitcher. She's created many unique and thoughtful gifts of artwork, and I'm lucky to have several of them.
Her newest creative outlet is a blog, (www.catholicgirl36.blogspot.com) "Fibro, Faith and Creativity." I'm looking forward to reading about her thoughts, ideas and inspirations.
So I guess it's pretty clear that I'm a fan as well as a friend. But I think her book is worthy, so I was happy to help her work on it.
And, it gave me more experience writing with the Dragon Naturally Speaking program. It was quite an adventure, to say the least!
In a previous post, (Back on Track) I wrote about my frustrations with trying to "train" the program to recognize and interpret my voice. Because of my nasally voice and less-than-perfect diction, what I was reading and what the program was "hearing" turned out to be completely different, in many instances. But it got to the point where it was beyond frustrating and was just simply funny!
Sometimes I got laughing so hard I had to turn off the mic and call to Ian, "You've got to come in and read this!" And I called Michelle and read her passages, and we were in fits of laughter.
For example, her main character is a kind-hearted little boy named "Damon." It's not a typical name, like "John," so I tried to be very careful in pronouncing it. Of course, the name is written over and over throughout the book, but most of the times I read it, the program heard something else instead of "Damon." Like "payment." What? I figured Dragon is used frequently for business writing, so maybe it's programmed to understand and interpret mostly business language. OK, I guess that makes some sense. But then, it wrote, "game on." That's not a very common phrase, but somehow, Dragon kept writing it again and again. It was really becoming a challenge to get the program to understand me, but I was determined to make it work. Game on!
But there were two interpretations of "Damon" that were so funny that I'm still cracking up. One was "Demon" - that's just so wrong, considering that this character is a good little Catholic boy! It's not like Michelle wrote The Exorcist, so why "demon," "demon," demon," over and over? Maybe it's the program that's possessed! And the other interpretation of "Damon" was "gay man!" When I told Michelle, she said, "Maybe that's Damon when he grows up!" She gave Damon the last name "Whitberry," which was a problem, too. The program wrote, "gay men and Barry!" So, an innocent childrens' scene, where Damon grabs his best friend Pinky's arm on the playground and she says, "Let me go, Damon Whitberry!" sounds like something very different when it reads instead, "Let me go, gay men and Barry!" What kind of book does this program think it is?! It got to the point where I just had to laugh. Then I turned off the mic and typed the rest of the pages!
I imagine this demented little Dragon creature inside the computer, gleefully mangling my words and confounding me, as I try to figure out how it "hears" and "thinks" the way it does. It looks like I'll have to do battle with it, before I can tame it, and train it to work with me and for me. As long as it doesn't breathe fire and cause the computer to melt down! But I'll just have to keep rising to the challenge, until I have it under my power, at last!