Barb! I'm so happy for you! Eeeee!!

Still on 22, I'm pretty sure I can finish tonight though. Then I need to knock out a critique and it's off to 23. I'm in the fun middle section now. Big events in the plot come pretty much every chapter now.

Also, I caught up to my current revision location while listening this morning. The last four chapters sounded better, so that's encouraging. As a whole my listening experience has told me it's not there yet, but I'm a long ways from being done revising.

Gud, how distracting has the text to audio voice been for you? I've done it a couple of times with my work when I want to hear specific bits of dialogue, in particular, but no matter how much I play around with the speeds and voices to get something approximating what I hear in my head, it's still so obviously a computer voice I wind up focusing on that rather than the words themselves.

There are stretches that are amazingly good, but there are others where it's really off. It's a bit distracting, but it works better than I thought. I don't have much time, so being able to listen during commuting dead time is useful for me.

I'm using the AT&T natural voice 'Audrey'.

I'm using the AT&T natural voice 'Audrey'.

It definitely helps to find a program where you don't find the voice too distracting. I have software called Read&Write which is fairly customizable, in terms of speed, pitch etc. That's helpful.

Also, getting used to the voice helps. Being dyslexic, I read a lot of my books, journals etc via computer programs. Familiarity makes the computerized voices sound a bit more natural.

One problem I have is that I'm trying to compare how my stuff stacks up to audiobooks I download from my library, just in terms of flow and dialogue. It's not easy to compensate for text-to-speech vs. an actual person.

I have learned that attributions and physical beats are sometimes awkward. I reuse words in the same paragraph too often. A lot of my sentences have more words than needed. I have a lot of work to do. On the plus side, I think the story is good and my feedback seems to support that so far. I think I have something that can be good, but I need to work on my craft.

I think a computer program would drive me insane, but I always find it helpful when we have critique at our writers group and read aloud. You hear so much more than you see.

It's not ideal, but I have to work with the time I have.

Here is a link to the AT&T natural voices demo.

[link]

Familiarity makes the computerized voices sound a bit more natural.

Very true.