On Dictating First Drafts

Perfectionists, this one’s for you.

Dictation in the 1890s looked like this.

One of my most pleasurable reading experiences of the year so far has been Melissa Broder’s second novel, Milk Fed, a book I had to read after hearing Broder interviewed by author Lisa Locasio on the podcast LitCit.

It’s a wonderful interview start to finish about sex, death, desire, disordered eating, and a certain kind of Chinese restaurant found in the college towns of the midwest and much of the wisdom and intimacy of the conversation has stayed with me. But the practical piece of writing advice I’ve held on to is this: Dictate your first drafts.

While living in New York, Broder often wrote poems while walking or on the subway, but after moving to Los Angeles in 2013, her tactic of writing in motion proved untenable.

“I could not be typing poems on the 405,” she said. “So I started dictating using Siri and a free app called SimpleNote.”

In dictation, her poem’s line breaks disappeared and her tone became more conversational, which led to the book of essays, So Sad Today. When Broder had an idea for her first novel, The Pisces, dictation helped the impossible seem doable.

“I thought, ‘I don’t know if I can write a novel, but what if I just dictate three paragraphs a day?’”