I’m trying something new as a writer, something that requires completely changing my familiar writing habits: dictation. The other day, my friend Jolynn told me about some dictation software her parents gave her for Christmas. I thought it sounded worth a shot, so I looked up dictation apps for my phone and found some free ones I could try.

I work an hour and a half drive away from home, see, so even though I only have to go to campus twice a week, I’m in the car for six hours a week commuting to and from my classes. If I could spend even a small portion of that time “writing,” I would bump my productivity up immensely.

So last week I downloaded Dragon Dictation. The first day, I had trouble trying to get my mind into writer mode. I’m so used to typing as part of my process that I think my mind almost has a Pavlovian response to sitting in front of the computer and opening a document to write. Speaking the story out loud just wasn’t doing it for me, and I ended up just deleting the barely coherent crap I came up with.

But I refused to give in so quickly. Six freakin’ hours a week, I kept telling myself. Six hours to myself, without my little girl climbing all over me. It would be the perfect time to write.

So I tried again the next day I had to go to campus. I waited until a sentence formed in my mind—that’s usually the way I begin any writing session—and I turned on the app and just started going for it. I “wrote” for the rest of the drive to campus and ended up with about 1000 words to add to my novel, words I feel pretty good about, too. Of course, I’m still in the very early stages of trying this out, but I’m going to keep at it, and I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that this is going to help me write way, way, way more.