Why is it the one thing you dread, resist, fear, dislike and avoid, is THE one thing that you need to do the most to succeed in your goal?
After hearing my voice on a tape recorder years ago, I have avoided reading aloud.
Hearing myself made me cringe and flush hot with shame and embarrassment. The tinny high-pitched nasal-sounding me that talked into the microphone ran for the hills and hasn't been seen since.
No matter how hard I try. I can't seem to overcome that fear. If I try to read aloud, my revising stalls out completely. Instead, I am using Dragon SpeaksNaturally software. The Read That (Test to speech) feature reads back paragraphs at a time.
Earlier on, I listen and make edits to flesh out the first draft, then later toward the end of the revision stage, the voice reading back to me helps me to vary sentence structure and adjust the sound of the word flow.
As the voice reads, I follow along in the text and make edits as needed. If I need to stop the voice, I press the Esc key, make more extensive edits, then select the text and either click on Audio, then Read That or say, "Select next four paragraphs" then "Read That" into the headset.
Hearing the flow of the words in the story had taken my writing to a new level. I highly recommend the Reading Aloud advice, but if that's not possible, Dragon SpeaksNaturally is the next best thing!
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