I swear I’m going to start writing this week. Seriously. I singlehandedly paved that infamous, fabled road to hell last week but one thing or another sidetracked me, the most fun of which was unintentionally playing hooky for literally an entire morning at Starbucks with Miss Jennifer while the Big Bad Wolf continually texted me to come home and hit the keyboard. But she and I honestly solved all the world’s problems over coffee, so I consider that to be time exceedingly well spent.
For the balance of the week, I transcribed our first two interviews. You truly have no idea just how ridonculously fabulous life can be until you’ve transcribed two hour-long interviews. We used that amazing recording pen I previously wrote about for the interviews, and David had forayed further into the world of technology by buying us dictation software. I thought it would be bunnycake to put the earbud from the recording pen in one ear, the headset for the dictation software over the other (I looked frighteningly like the friggin’ Time-Life operator), and just repeat what was said in the interviews line by line. The bright side was that there wasn’t a loaded pistol in my desk drawer. Pausing phrase by phrase, repeating what I heard, watching the dictation software type what it thought it heard, correcting the phrase, then playing the next phrase was almost too enchanting to tell you about, lest I make you obscenely jealous. At one point, the dictation software apparently thought it heard me utter, “I also got an neo-swift, I don’t think Samba with Marquis.” I can’t be entirely positive, but I’m fairly sure that’s not what the person said in the interview, nor what I repeated into the mic.
My head pounded for two days and I constantly felt on the brink of vomiting, what with all the starting and stopping and going back-and-forth. But on Thursday night at 7:15 – literally moments from being hauled away for a lengthy respite at Hall-Brooke – I completed the second transcript. Fortunately, near the end David did a sanity check and found us a transcription service to use for the rest of the project. Same as it ever was: I do most of the dirty work; he plays the hero who gets all the glory. Yeah, thanks, I’ve heard all that “wind beneath his wings” crap before.
But now that I can visually refer to the Chapter One interview transcripts for ideas and quotes, I will absolutely start writing. Soon. Well, unless I decide to go out and Samba with Marquis instead. There’s simply no end to that kind of fun.